LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

BRJZ 






UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA. 



k] 



jj^ 



FOUNDATION STONES 



LECTURES TO THE YOUNG. 



By Rev. Robert F. Coyle 

Pastor of the Fullerton Avenue Presbyterian Church, Chicago. 



' MA Y 3^7)38 7' 

J' 

Fleming H, Revell, 
chicago, j new york!, 

148 & ISO IVTadison. St. | 148 «& ISO Nassau St. 

Ptihlisher of EvangplinnI TAteratnre . 






Copyright, 1887, by F. H. Revell. 



Contents. 

I.— Foundation Stones 7 

II.— The Lock and Its Key, 22 

III.— Trying the Keys, 38 

IV.— Christianity's Key, 54 

v.— Among the Gods, 73 

VL— The Inspired Book, 92 

VII.— The Inspired Book— Continued, - - 110 

V^III.— The Inspired Book— Continued, - - - 127 

IX.— An Indestructible Book, - - - - 144 

X.— The Christ, 160 

XI.— What Then? 177 



Introductory Note. 



The lectures contained in this volume were pre- 
pared for young people. The attempt was not to 
" walk about Zion and go round about her and tell 
the towers thereof," but simply to call attention to a 
few of the foundation stones on which we build, and 
point out their strength and solidity. The author 
wished to clear away doubts, remove stumbling- 
blocks, and arm the young against floating infidelity, 
as well as to fortify the faith of those who are still 
babes in Christ. No one can feel more keenly than 
he how poorly the work has been done, and yet he 
has the satisfaction of knowing that not a little good 
was accomplished by their delivery, not only among 
the class to whom they were especially addressed, 
but also among older persons. The favor with 
which they were received and the solicitations of 
many who heard them to have them put in perma- 
nent form and sent out upon a wider mission, in- 
duced the author to have them published. Their 



preparation necessitated a somewhat extended 
course of reading, and for all the help received, 
grateful recognition is hereby made. If the lec- 
tures shall aid any who are seeking light, or prove 
a means of re-enforcing the faith of any who have 
already made the great decision, the author will 
have his reward. To this end he sends them forth, 
praying that they may be accompanied by the bless- 
ing of God. 

R. R COYLS. 

Chicago, May, 1887. 



Foundation Stones. 



Foundation Stones. 



^^ If the foundation be destroyed what can the righteous 
doV — Psalms ii: j. 

That there has been a remarkable development of 
the spirit of criticism within the past few years can- 
not have escaped the notice of even the most casual 
reader; this is not altogether to be deplored. Indeed 
in certain directions it has done an immense amount 
of good. It has corrected errors and cleared away 
not a little rubbish from about the truth, thus bring- 
ing it more and more clearly into view. But criti- 
cism is not by any means the highest function of 
the human intellect, and to call an age critical may 
be paying it a very doubtful compliment. The work 
of construction must always stand on a loftier and 
grander plane than that of destruction. ''It is an 
easy thing to destroy; and there are always de- 
stroyers enough. It requires skill and labor to 
erect a building; any idle tramp can burn it down. 



8 Foundation Stones. 

God alone can form and paint a flower; any foolish 
child can pull it all to pieces." 

There never was an age more constructive than 
this along material lines; it has laid hold of the 
forces and secrets of nature and built them up 
into innumerable comforts of domestic and social 
life. So without exaggeration I think I may say 
that to an equal degree it is critical along all spir- 
itual lines. Its faith in nature has developed into 
a passion; its faith in God, in many quarters at 
least, has degenerated into cold and questioning 
speculation. Here and there we find this spirit in- 
carnating itself in certain advocates whose avowed 
purpose is destruction. They are professional 
iconoclasts, and with the axes and hammers of hos- 
tile criticism are seeking to break down the carved 
work of the christian ages. Bringing wit, and elo- 
quence and cleverness to their aid, they have un- 
settled the faith of thousands, and thousands they 
have set hopelessly adrift on the troubled sea of 
doubt whose "other shore" is lost in fog and night. 
They are assailing the old house in which the fath- 
ers found refuge and driving the sons and daugh- 
ters out into the pitiless storm to wander homeless 
and Godless to the grave upon which there grows 



Foundation Stones. 9 

no resurrection flower. If they had something to 
substitute for that which they would take away; if 
they could point to some other support, some other 
hope, some other way out of the wilderness, some 
other foundation on which to build, it would not be 
so bad, but they have absolutely nothing to offer. 
They would rudely dash out our light and leave us 
to grope in darkness over life's rough road. They 
would strike the gospel cordial from the lips of the 
old, the weary, the burdened, the dying, and leave 
them neither balm nor physician. Surely such 
downright cruelty as that is hardly compatible with 
a spirit of benevolence and philanthropy. 

There is a story that on a certain very inclement 
day in the city of Washington when the streets were 
ankle-deep with slush, and the cold, raw wind was 
driving fiercely, a well-known Colonel entered one 
of the hotels and walked into the reading room. He 
met there a friend, standing by the window, look- 
ing out upon the dreary scene, to whom he re- 
marked: 

"Isn't this a terrible day?" 

*^ Indeed it is," responded the gentleman; "and 
I wish you had been here a few minutes ago. A 
poor crippled old man was making the best of his 



10 Foundation Stones. 

way thro' the storm across the street, when a big, 
lusty fellow came along, kicked his crutch from 
under his arm and left him lying in the slush and 
wet." 

*' The scoundrel!" exclaimed the Colonel. *«I 
wish I had been here! I would have wrung his neck 
for him." 

'*Well Colonel, you are the big, lusty fellow I 
had in mind," said the man to the amusement of a 
number of weather-bound listeners. " You are big 
and strong and hearty, and you go about the coun- 
try kicking the crutches of Christianity from under 
the arms of poor, crippled sinners who have no other 
support, and then leave them wallowing in the mud 
and mire of unbelief and despair. You are all tear 
down and no build up." 

The Colonel, we are told, was stunned by the 
parallel, for he was a lecturer against Christianity 
and the Bible. He made no response but walked 
back into the office, where, it is said, he sat for an 
hour or more seeming to be in a brown study. 

Whether the story is truth or fiction I shall not 
undertake to say. Dr. Seiss, of Philadelphia, is 
responsible for it. But this I know, that it very 
forcibly illustrates the spirit and work of infidelity. 



Foundation Stones. 11 

A spirit which Rousseau declares would lead men 
*'to trample under foot all that mankind reveres, 
snatch from the afflicted the only comfort left them 
in their misery, from the rich and great the only 
curb that can restrain their passions; tear from the 
heart all remorse for vice, all hopes of virtue, and 
yet boast themselves the benefactors of the human 
race! " 

It is the prevalence of this spirit and its unsettling 
influence, especially upon the minds of the young, 
that has lead me to the conviction that a course of 
Sunday evening lectures onihQ fundamental truths 
of the Christian religion would be both opportune 
and profitable. Christianity may be regarded as a 
great building, and as such has certain " foundation 
stones " upon which everything depends. It is at 
these we are to take a look and candidly consider 
their quality. By and by perhaps we shall "walk 
about Zion and go round about her and tell the 
towers thereof, mark well her bulwarks and con- 
sider her palaces." For the present, however, we 
are to give our attention to the foundations. Hence, 
I have chosen, as a sort of general text, the words 
of the psalmist as recorded in the eleventh psalm 
and third verse; ' ' If the foundations be destroyed 



12 Foundation Stones. 

what can the righteous do ? " The passage suggests 
the necessity of holding and frequently preaching 
basal truths. Not that we fear that they can be 
destroyed absolutely, for God's church is founded 
on a rock and ' ' the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it." But they may be destroyed relatively: 
that is, men may lose faith in them, and hence, so 
far as they are concerned, those foundations may 
be as though they were not. We have no fears for 
Christianity. It has rooted itself too firmly in the 
world's heart, and imbedded itself too deeply in the 
world's thought ever to be eradicated from the 
earth. At the very centre of Christianity stands 
Christ, whom even the infidel Kenan calls *' the cor- 
ner-stone of humanity" and Christ's ''name shall 
endure forever." ''He shall have dominion also 
from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of 
the earth." This course of lectures is not under- 
taken to bolster up a dying cause, nor with the 
hope of throwing some beams of light upon a fad- 
ing glory. To be specific my object is in the first 
place : 

1. To confirm the faith of my fellow disciples, 
especially the young, by pointing out the strength 
of the foundations on which we build. Many of you 



Foundation Stones, 13 

find it difficult to meet the sophistries and argu- 
ments of infidelity because you have never studied, 
perhaps never have had the means of studying, the 
evidences of Christianity in a thorough and system- 
atic way. Hence your faith receives many a shock 
as you come upon the clever thrusts of the caviling 
skeptic in the newspaper paragraph and in the 
books and magazines you read. They set you 
adrift sometimes and you hardly know where you 
are. And this state of things is often encouraged 
and promoted by that strange perverseness of the 
human heart which leads, even Christian people 
sometimes, to read what is said against their relig- 
ion much more readily than what is said in its 
favor. I have occasionally met Christians who 
were quite familiar with the objections of infidelity 
to our faith while they were profoundly ignorant 
of the abundant material, solid, trustworthy, un- 
answerable, that can be brought to its defense. If 
there are any such here I invite them to a candid 
survey of the foundation stones on which we build. 
I think you will find them broad and strong and 
abiding. A study of this kind will give intelligence 
and force and stability to your faith. It will put 
arrows in your quiver and enable you to take the 



14 Foundation Stones, 

offensive and carry the war into Africa. You will 
see *'that we have not followed cunningly devised 
fables" but that our feet rest upon the solid ground 
of indestructible fact. But while I desire to re-as- 
sure the doubting Thomases within the church and 
confirm their faith in the religion of Christ, I am 
no less anxious in the second place, 

2. To show to those without, who are honestly 
skeptical^ the substantial basis of our hope. I say 
honestly skeptical, for we can do nothing with the 
man who makes a virtue of his skepticism and 
doubts because it is the fashion. The person who can 
dispose of centuries of Christian thought and study 
with a sneer, and drive it out of the arena of con- 
sideration with some smart sally of wit, will get no 
good from any undertaking of this nature. But 
there are intelligent young men and women who 
are honestly in trouble and darkness about these 
things. They are not prejudiced against our faith. 
They would like to believe if they could. If their 
convictions went as far as their sympathies they 
would be disciples to-night. They are not in the 
territory of skepticism by choice, nor because they 
like its atmosphere and its starless skies, but be- 
cause they can't see their way out. They were 



Foundation Stones, 15 

born with a skeptical bias, and they have never yet 
been able to throw it off. 

With such people, as another has said, ^* we 
need to employ gentleness, patience, argument and 
discussion, that we may bring the truth to view, 
obviate difficulties, and open the way for candid 
souls to come to a right understanding and conclu- 
sion. What such persons need is not severity, but 
reasonable consideration and a frank canvassing of 
the gi'ounds of faith with some competent instruc- 
tor in the spirit of brotherhood, charity, and truth, 
that they may have a just opportunity to see and 
know and fairly conclude for themselves. " Pro- 
ceeding in this spirit, as it is my purpose by the 
help of God to do, the undertaking can hardly be 
in vain. Indeed I believe it will result in a rich 
harvest for the Master's garner. 

Those of us who have been induced by divine 
grace to commit ourselves and our destinies to the 
good ship Christianity- like occasionally to go down 
into her hold and examine her oak ribs and take a 
look at her length and depth of keel and scrutinize 
anew the solidity of her carpentry. It does us good. 
It stimulates our faith. It brightens our hope. It 
makes us feel safer and stronger and enables us to 



16 Foundation Stones. 

walk her decks with more certain tread, no matter 
how the wind may blow. And I am sure that if 
you, who have never yet embarked upon the old 
craft, will enter upon this investigation with us in 
all candor, you, too, will become passengers and con- 
tinue with us to the other side. To the end that 
you may see your way clear to do this may God 
bless this humble effort. The history of the past is 
not wanting in cases of honest skeptics who were 
brought into the kingdom by an impartial and 
thorough examination of the essential truths of the 
Christian religion. There were Lord Lyttleton and 
Gilbert West, both avowed skeptics and men of 
great ability. The one decided to take up the con- 
version of St. Paul, the other the resurrection of 
Christ, and make an exhaustive study of these sub- 
jects. They did so, and the result was that both be- 
came humble followers of the Lord Jesus. So, in our 
own country, Dr. Nelson, the celebrated author of 
"The Cause and Cure of Infidelity," was led to re- 
nounce his skepticism and lay hold upon Christ by 
pursuing the same course. He made up his mind 
to canvass the whole subject of Christianity, and 
to do it with stern integrity, unwearying patience, 
and tireless zeal. He did so and became a man of 



Foundation Stones. 17 

mighty power as a preacher of the Cross. And I 
am persuaded that if you will do in some small 
measure as these men did, you, too, will see that 
Christianity is a "city that hath foundations whose 
maker and builder is God." Such then is our ob- 
ject: To confirm those who are weak in the faith 
and convince sincere and skeptical hearts that we 
are not building upon the sand, but upon everlast- 
ing granite. It may be proper to add that, under- 
lying and including and permeating both of these, 
our desire is to glorify God. May his presence 
be with us and crown the attempt with success to 
the praise of his Holy Name. 

Having thus stated the purpose of these lectures, 
let us devote the remainder of this preliminary dis- 
course to emphasizing, 

3. Thelmpovtcmceof the Undertaking. Indeed, 
it cannot be exaggerated. It has to do with the 
very roots of life and involves issues the most far- 
reaching and momentous. Whether we accept 
Christianity or not, we are bound in all candor to 
admit that it presents the only adequate solution 
of the problem of existence. No other system of 
religion or philosophy assigns to man an origin so 
exalted and a destiny so sublime. In view of what 



18 Foundation Stones, 

materialism and agnosticism have to offer, Lyman 
Abbott does not overstate the case when he says 
"there is no alternative between the Christian re- 
ligion, and no religion at all." The inevitable 
logic of the situation is either the Christian's God, 
or no God. When men of world-wide fame tell us 
that there is **no God that can be known, or 
worshipped, or loved ; no soul, no immortality; no 
eternal laws of right and wrong; no blame for 
guilt, or praise for patient, self-denying service; no 
religion, and no true, high, and hopeful life for 
either the here or the hereafter" — when this is the 
conclusion to which they are driven by a material- 
istic interpretation of the universe, then it is either 
Christianity or absolute despair. There is no mid- 
dle ground, or if there is, the keenest intellects, 
the ablest investigators, have failed to find it. 
Every bird of discovery sent out has either returned 
to the ark of Christianity, or with weary and 
baffled wing, fallen into the fathomless waves. It 
has seen no olive branch of hope, and found no 
resting place for the soles of its feet save as it has 
come back to the vessel from whence it flew. To 
show you that I am not begging the question, I 
quote from one of the most brilliant infidels of the 



Foundation Stones. 19 

age. I refer to the late Professor Clifford of Eng- 
land. Said he: *'It cannot be doubted that 
theistic belief is a comfort and a solace to those 
who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very painful 
loss. * * * * "VVe have seen the spring sun 
shine out of an empty heaven, to light up a soul- 
less earth, we have felt with utter loneliness that 
the Great Companion is dead. Our children, it 
may be hoped, will know that sorrow only by the 
reflex light of a wondering compassion " What is 
that but the confession of a mind whose hope had 
been snuffed out by infidel philosophy, that it is 
either Christianity or blank despair; either the 
Great Companion or a lonely journey thro' the 
shadows into the night? 

Since, then, there is no alternative, since it is 
either revealed religion or nothing, our subject as- 
sumes superlative importance. If we are content 
to believe that man is but the consummate flower 
of evolution, untouched and unfashioned by a di- 
vine finger, to bloom for a few short j^ears and 
then drop back into unconscious dust; if we be- 
lieve he is but a kind of theatre, in which are 
enacted little comedies and tragedies, and that 
when the fires of death consume the theatre the 



20 Foundation Stones. 

play must stop forever, then, of course, we belong 
on the side of the Nothingarians, and are not much 
concerned about this matter. But those who hold 
such a creed as this are exceedingly few. I doubt 
if there is one such here. No matter how vague 
and shadowy may be our views, no matter how 
crude may be our notions, we have never been 
quite able to rid ourselves of the conviction that 
there is something beyond, that the grave is not 
our goal, but the gateway to another life. We 
feel that in some way or other we are related to 
Higher Powers, and that time is a probationary 
school wherein to achieve the purpose of that re- 
lationship. Well has it been said that: "The 
complex wheel of ongoing things has turned us out 
upon this stage, here in the span of earthly life, to 
determine all. We cannot postpone, we cannot es- 
cape. We must here make the great decision." 

Ever and anon there steals into our conscious- 
ness some such questions as these: What if after 
all this earthly life is but the seed-plot of an 
eternal harvest ? What if each day is a shuttle 
flying through the loom of time, carrying with it 
the thread with which it is weaving the web of our 
destiny ? What if our thoughts and motives and 



Foundation Stones. 21 

actions are every hour causing our characters to 
crystallize into shapes that will abide forever? 
What if there should be a heaven and a hell, and a 
Judge of the quick and the dead ? What if the 
God-man did become incarnate, and die upon the 
Cross, and burst the bars of the tomb, and ascend 
to the right hand of the Majesty above ? What if 
the faith of the ages is true ? It may be doubted 
if there is one into whose mind such questionings 
have not come in the silent hour of meditation and 
serious thought. None of us would undertake to 
give them a firm and deliberate answer in the nega- 
tive. But if they must be answered in the affirma- 
tive they are questions freighted with tremendous 
importance. They involve all that makes life de- 
sirable or even tolerable, peace and hope and im- 
mortal blessedness, as well as the punishment of 
evil and the moral equilibrium of the universe. 
They touch us at every point of our being. They 
concern our most cherished interests, our holiest 
aspirations, the most solemn events of our history, 
the birth, the baptism, the bridal, the burial; they 
have to do wdth the coffin in the upper chamber, 
with the inscriptions chiseled on the tombstones of 
our dead, with our churches and all their sweet as- 



Foundation Stones. 



sociations, with our most revered and beneficent 
institutions; they enter into all the deepest and 
tenderest and most sacred things of earth. As 
sincere men and women, therefore, we are in no 
mood to cast them aside as unworthy of our con- 
sideration. May God help us, and give us the 
spirit of honest seekers after the truth that when 
we find it we may use it for his glory. Amen. 



The Lock and Its Key. 23 



The Lock and Its Key. 



" But ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee; and 
the fowls of the air afid they shall tell thee. Or speak to 
the earthy and it shall teach thee; and the fishes of the 
sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these 
that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this V — Job 12: 
7-9^ 

So evident is the existence of God that to some 
people it may seem like a waste of time to argue in 
its favor. They may consider it about as uncalled 
for as to attempt to prove the axioms of geometry. 
They tell us in the words of the apostle that ^'the 
invisible things of him from the creation of the 
world are clearly seen being understood by the 
things that are made. " But it is assuming more 
than facts will warrant to declare that the doctrine 
of the being of God appeals to all men with con- 
clusive force. Says the Hon. George R. Wend- 
ling : "Countless are the reasons why men will not 
avow the full measure of their doubts concerning 



24 Foundation Stones. 

the existence of an omnipotent and personal God ; 
nevertheless those doubts exist, and are greater 
foes to the progress of religion than any of the 
causes more frequently assailed by the pulpit. I 
would not presume to tell clergymen their duty; 
yet mingling more than they with men of the 
world, I bring to them from workshop and from 
farm, from the bar and from the public places of 
every Venice where merchants most do congregate, 
the message that what most we need is the convic- 
tion that there is a personal God. Strive to supply 
that conviction and seek to hedge it about with 
unanswerable argument, and the church wins an 
invincible lodgment in the hearts of all sincere 
men. " We are told in rhymic phrase that — 

"In all the crowded universe 

There is but one stupendous word ; 

And huge and rough, or trimmed and terse, 

Its fragments build and undergird 

The songs and stories we rehearse. 

All forms that human language tries 
All phrases of the books and schools, 
And all the words of great and wise 
Are weak attempts, or clumsy tools, 
To speak the word that speech defies. 



The Lock and Its Key. 25 

That word, ineffable to man, 

Thougli spoken thro' a thousand years, 

Or thundered in the fiery van 

Of all the myriad wheeling spheres, 

Unvoiced remains where they began. 

There is no tree that rears its crest. 
No fern or flower that cleaves the sod, 
No bird that sings above its nest, 
But tries to speak the name of God, 
And dies when it has done its best." 

These, however, are the strains of a poet, and he 
who uttered the text was a poet too, and the poet 
is not expected to be scientifically exact in his 
statements. We may admit that his words strike 
a responsive chord in our hearts, but when we come 
down to the plain prose of the matter, what we 
Avant to have settled is the very thing the poet as- 
sumes. Now it will help us not a little in the 
pursuit of our object to have our minds thoroughly 
impressed at the very outset with 

THE REALITY OF THE INVISIBLE. 

We do not need to be told that the greatest 
things in the universe, though no physical eye has 
ever seen them, are as real as any solid granite on 
which we ever stepped. Begin with yourself. 
Flesh and blood and a certain gi'ace and beauty of 



Foundation Stones. 



form you can see, but these are not you any more 
than the house is the tenant or than the organ is 
the music. That which makes you a man, that 
which constitutes the grandeur of your being, is 
MIND, and yet you never saw it. But can you 
doubt its reality ? You could as easily doubt the 
reality of your hands and feet. If, then, you 
should say ' 'God cannot be seen, therefore there is 
no God," it would be answer enough to such an 
argument to reply "You cannot be seen; therefore 
there is no you. " If I were to reason in that way 
you would hiss me from the platform as a mounte- 
bank or a fool. That, however, stripped of the 
drapery of clever and subtle speech, is precisely 
the position of not a few on this subject. 

Let me ask you to lay hold of this suggestion, 
that all the greatest things are out of sight. You 
walk down the street and see magnificent buildings. 
In finish and architecture they are wonderful, and 
if some one should tell you that those buildings 
have no existence in fact, or that, like Topsy, they 
"just grew," you would be apt to apply to him a 
term more forcible than elegant. You know they 
are real, but not more real, and not nearly as great 
as the intellect that designed them. Here is 



The Lock and Its Key. 27 

Milton's " Paradise Lost." It is a poem put up in 
book form — so much paper and ink. There is 
reality in that for you can feel it, you can look at 
it and count its pages and divisions. But the 
mighty genius that conceived it and found a Beth- 
lehem for it to be born in, what eye ever got a 
glimpse of that ? Does any one therefore question 
its reality ? No more than he questions the reality 
of the wind that brushes the forest from its path, 
tho' he never beheld it or put his finger on it. 
Take music. We love it. It soothes, it comforts, 
it inspires, it steals into the soul with sweet memo- 
ries of long ago, or with hopes of a bright to-mor- 
row, and we are sure it is just as real as any bread 
that ever appeased our hunger or any water that 
ever assuaged our thirst. But where shall music 
be found ? We take the singer, we examine his 
tongue, his larynx, his vocal cords, his diaphragm, 
the whole apparatus with which he produces sound 
and we do not find the first note. Then we turn 
to the organ, pull it apart, scatter its keys and stops 
and pedals all about, cut its bellows open, scruti- 
nize it through and through, and after we have 
done all we have failed to discover music. But 
though it eludes us we know that music is, and 



28 Foundation Stones. 

would be, if every organ and singer were destroyed. 
Take magnetism, gravitation, electricity, the laws 
of chemical affinity, all the great forces of nature, 
and not one of them can be seen, and yet they are 
as real as the mountain or the throbbing ocean. 
Not only do I want you to bear in mind the reality 
of the invisible, but to lay hold of this fact also 

that THE INVISIBLE IS SUPREME. 

It holds the sceptre of empire. The reasons, the 
passions, the appetites, the motives that rule your 
life are all beyond the reach of sight. That which 
rules the universe, looking at it now without any 
reference to a Grod; that which holds the stars in 
their orbits, that which governs the tides, that which 
directs animal and vegetable life, is the unseen. 
Hence, since all the greatest things are invisible, 
the fact that no man hath seen God at any time is 
an argument for, rather than against, his existence. 
I make nothing of this, however, but am simply 
clearing the way. 

If your professor of mathematics should declare 
to you that a certain proposition in geometry is 
true because Euclid said so you might believe it or 
you might not. You would certainly be at liberty 
to doubt it. Euclid is only a reporter and you 



The Lock and Its Key. 29 

could not be required to believe it on his testimony. 
What you want, and what you feel you have a 
right to demand, is a demonstration of its truth for 
yourself. So, as a religious teacher, if I were to 
tell you that there is a God because the bible says 
so, you might reasonably object that I had not 
proved my case. To proceed in that way would 
be simply begging the question. You are not cer- 
tain about the authenticity of the bible. You want 
to know who gave it authority to speak on this 
subject. To say that there is a God because the 
bible teaches such a doctrine and then to affirm 
that we must believe the bible because God in- 
spired it, would be to reason in a very vicious cir- 
cle indeed. For the present let me say that I 
neither affirm nor deny the being of God. I make 
no dogmatic assertion, but simply point to the 
facts. Here they are all around us, in the world, 
in society, in ourselves; explain them, account for 
them, clear them up, give us a reasonable interpre- 
tation of them. Dr. Parker of the London Temple, 
from whom I expect to get a good deal of help, 
has an illustration something like this: When you 
enter upon the study of algebra the book says. 
Let X equal the unknown quantity, and you might 



30 Foundation Stones. 

interpose an objection and demand that the x be 
explained first of all. You might say prove the 
unknown quantity or I shall not proceed a step. 
But that would be very foolish. Like a wise stu- 
dent you take the a?, apply it to the most complex 
problems, and you discover that it works wonders 
and by and by you find its own value. So, for the 
time being, God is the unknown quantity. The 
facts of the universe are the terms of the problem. 
The task before us is to find x or something that 
will give us a satisfactory solution. 

If the doctrine of the being of God gives us a 
point of view from which all things are seen to fall 
into the most perfect order and harmony, if it gives 
us the best and most complete solution of all we 
see about us, we are bound as reasonable men and 
women to accept it. 

Ours then is 

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 

The scientific man goes out into the world of na- 
ture, and gathers up all the facts he can, and seeks 
to account for them. That is the course precisely 
which we shall pursue. We shall take nothing for 
granted; we shall ask no favors from any man or 
any book. Here are the facts of nature and human 



The Lock and Its Key. 31 

life, and here are Christianity and Christianity's 
Christ, and Christianity's Bible; now give us a ra- 
tional explanation of them. This universe is a 
lock; now find a key that will open it and let us in 
to its secrets. 

That method ought to satisfy the most critical. 
There is nothing abstruse, nothing meta-physical, 
nothing difficult about it. What we are after is a 
key that will open this complex and wonderful 
lock of a universe, and if we should find one I 
trust we shall take it and carry it in our breasts for- 
ever. Let us take the keys which infidel philoso- 
phy carries at its girdle and try them one by one. 
The first one we come to is 

CHANCE. 

It is somewhat rusty with age, for it was used 
by Democritus, a philosopher of Greece, more than 
two thousand years ago, and I know not by how 
many before his day and since. But we shall give 
it a fair trial, and if it opens the lock well and good. 
Please, then, examine the facts. Turn where you 
will, and the universe is full of order. The sea- 
sons come and go with unvarying regularity. 
There is nothing spasmodic about the recuiTence 
of night and day. From year to year, and century 



S2 Foundation Stones. 

to century, they follow each other with undeviat- 
ing uniformity. The stars march on in the same 
orbits forever. There is no jar, no confusion. The 
sun never fails to rise, nor is it ever seen in the 
north. The streams all hurry to the sea. We 
never saw one flowing towards the top of the moun- 
tains, and we never expect to. All life is from 
the little to the great, "first the blade then the ear, 
after that the full corn in the ear;" so that that fa- 
mous fiction of the ancients about Minerva spring- 
ing full-armed from the brow of Jove has no par- 
allel in the world of nature. There are no sudden 
leaps, no violent twists, but everything unfolds 
and works in its own channel with the most beau- 
tiful harmony. Now these are some of the facts, 
and in every direction they manifest order. 

But can chance produce order? Here is the 
Oratorio of the Messiah. Do you suppose that 
that sublime composition ever resulted from throw- 
ing the seven notes of the musical scale together in 
a helter-skelter, hap-hazard sort of way ? Or take 
the dramas of Shakespeare. Can it be possible 
that they are the result of stirring and whirling the 
letters of the alphabet about in a blind and pro- 
miscuous manner ? The very question is absurd. 



The Lock and Its Key. 



But if chance cannot account for the drama or the 
oratorio, how much less can it account for the 
"grand poem of the universe, with all its living 
cantos ?" You go thro' the great city and everywhere 
you notice indications of order. Instead of being 
jumbled together it is laid off in streets, and divi- 
sions. Its buildings are numbered; its official ma- 
chinery is arranged in departments, and so in all 
directions we see evidences of method. But is not 
the order apparent in the universe just as marked 
as that in Chicago ? And if chance will not ex- 
plain Chicago, is it not preposterous to attempt to 
plain the universe with it ? 

But Order, as we are all aware, points to pur- 
pose. When we see things arranged in a certain 
way we infer at once that it was done with a cer- 
tain end in view. This is what the books call 

DESIGN. 

There is a story in the Century Magazine of 
three persons who were shipwrecked in the Pacific 
Ocean and with the aid of life-preservers, made 
their way to a little coral island. There, in that 
lonely place, much to their joy, they found an un- 
inhabited but well-ordered house. Did they say: 
"This is the work of chance! This house was 



34 Foundation Stones. 

built by the fortuitous coming together of bricks 
and boards and nails and glass ? " That would 
have been worse than childish folly. They said at 
once : ''This house was erected by some cultured 
and intelligent man as a kind of summer resi- 
dence." They were absolutely sure that some man 
had been there before them and that the house was 
his handiwork. It did not grow out of the island, 
it was not cast up by the sea. Well, young friends, 
this universe has all the marks of a building. Its 
parts are so related to one another, and so interde- 
pendent ; it is so filled with traces of design, of 
adaptations of means to ends, that we can hardly 
escape the conviction that it must have had a 
Builder. At any rate the key we are working 
with now fails to open the lock. Let me ask you 
to remember a few suggestive facts in this con- 
nection. 

Within the shell of the Qgg^ entirely excluded 
from air and where all is dark, the wings and lungs 
and eyes of the bird are prepared for the atmos- 
phere and the light. No watch ever made, no mech- 
anism ever contrived, is anywhere nearly as com- 
plicated as the eye. Where no ray of sunshine 
could penetrate it was fashioned, as no lens of 



The Lock and Its Key. 35 

man's making has ever been fashioned, with the 
most complete reference to the nature and proper- 
ties of light. Did chance make the telescope and 
microscope ? The man who should seriously urge 
such a doctrine as that would be considered a fit 
subject for the lunatic asylum. 

But there are lots of people who will pay fifty 
cents a head to hear it eloquently and wittily 
affirmed that the eye has no Maker ; that the world 
and all that is therein has come about by blind, 
unreasoning chance ! The atmosphere that en- 
swathes our world is composed of oxygen, nitrogen, 
and a small part of carbonic acid gas. The 
slightest variation in the combination of these ele- 
ments would result in infinite disaster. So deli- 
cate is the adjustment of these constituents that we 
may well ask who planned it ? If it was any other 
than it is, no living thing could exist. Think also 
of the beautiful arrangements of water. It is one 
of the most accommodating as well as one of the 
most necessary of all things. It will assume any 
shape, fit any vessel, adjust itself to any shore, fly 
thro' the air light as a feather, weave itself into 
fairy-like shrouds of mist, form itself into a cloud, 
freeze into ice so thick that it can be carted thro' 



36 Fowndation Stones. 

the streets as an article of commerce, and make of 
itself a bridge over which may march the traflSc of 
nations. A thousand miles inland, rain is wanted, 
and in response to the wooing of the sun, water 
leaps from the bosom of the sea into the sky, is 
taken in hand by the winds, hurried away over 
the mountains, and falls upon the thirsty fields in 
refreshing showers. In all other directions "it is 
a general law of nature that bodies contract as they 
become colder." Water, however, is an excep- 
tion. Frost expands it, so that we all know it is 
not safe to leave a vessel full of water standing 
thro' a cold winter's night. This is the reason 
why the ice floats on the surface of the lake. If 
water followed the general law it would contract 
under frost and thus the ice would sink to the bot- 
tom, layer upon layer, and not a fish could live in 
our streams. Now who can entertain the thought 
for a moment that this beneficent arrangement is 
the result of chance ? In all its forms water bears 
the imprint of design, and design is an unmistak- 
able mark of intelligence. 

Look at the wonderful adaptation of animals to 
their surroundings, the polar bears to the snows of 
the north, the camel to the sands and hot suns of 



The Lock and Its Key. 37 

the desert, so made that it can go many days with- 
out water; the bird that flies in the air to the 
atmosphere, the water-fowl to the water, the fish 
to the sea, and so on to the end of the list. If an 
animal must have a certain kind of food, it finds 
the means to secure it ready to hand. Does the 
wood-pecker live on worms ? It has a bill to bore 
for them. Does a fowl find its sustenance along 
the edge of pond or lake or river ? It has a long 
neck and long legs. 

In the words of Job then I may say: ' 'Ask now 
the beasts and they shall teach thee; and the fowls 
of the air, they shall tell thee. Or speak to the 
earth, and it shall teach thee; and the fishes of the 
sea shall declare unto thee. 

Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the 
Lord hath wrought this ?" At any rate it must be 
evident, I think, that the facts which we have been 
considering cannot be accounted for by chance. 
So far as we have gone it fails to open the lock. 
But here I stop for to-night. In our next lecture, 
God willing, we shall continue our subject from 
this point. May the God in whom many of us be- 
lieve, bless us all in the meantime. Amen. 



38 Foundation Stones. 



Trying the Keys^ 



" Who hath disposed the whole world V— Job 34 : ij. 

Last Sabbath evening we emphasized the reality 
and supremacy of the invisible. Our attention was 
also called to the order and design everywhere ap- 
parent 'n the universe as affording strong proof 
that it could not be accounted for by chance. This 
key could not open the lock. It failed to explain 
the facts. To-night we shall continue somewhat 
along the same line. We are still in search of a 
key. One of the most familiar of self-evident 
truths is this, that every effect must have an ade- 
quate cause. Now apply this universally accepted 
axiom to the great fact of 

LIFE. 

Life is an effect. It is something produced. 
Not long ago indeed there were scientists of no lit- 
tle celebrity who believed in the doctrine of spon- 
taneous generation and did not hesitate to teach 
it. It was maintained that life did not proceed 



Trying the Keys. 39 

from antecedent life but in some way or other 
sprang out of inanimate matter; that the living 
came from the non-living. But this theory has 
been entirely exploded, and according to Huxley 
the doctrine of life only from life is victorious 
along the whole line at the present day. So, also, 
Tyndall declares, though his sympathies seem to 
be on the other side, "that no shred of trustworthy 
experimental testimony exists to prove that life in 
our day has ever appeared independently of ante- 
cedent life." Chemistry has accomplished wonders 
but no combination of elements has ever yet pro- 
duced life. But the effect must have an adequate 
cause. Whence, then, is life ? Look at its abun- 
dance. Earth and air and sea are full of it. One 
naturalist tells us that he "saw hundreds of ani- 
malculse in the space of a grain of sand, and 10,- 
000 organized beings." The microscope has re- 
vealed the fact that an ordinary glass of water, 
which, to the naked eye, seems clear as crystal, 
teems with millions of living creatures each one of 
which is as perfect in plan and structure as are the 
beasts that roam over the plain. So abundant are 
the coral insects of the Pacific Ocean that they 
build whole islands. On the northeast coast of 



40 Foundation Stones, 

Australia is a reef 1,000 miles long and for 350 miles 
without break or opening, which these little ani- 
mals have formed. Humboldt estimated that there 
are about 50,000 different species of animals. Yet 
science teaches that there was a time when no life 
existed on our planet. The testimony of the rocks 
is that ''the extant genera of plants and animals in- 
habiting our earth began to be within a compara- 
tively short period in the history of our globe." 
Whence then is life? Admitting if you please that 
it all started from one original germ — an admis- 
sion which only complicates the problem, for it re- 
quires us to believe that Gladstone and the bivalve, 
man and midge, were launched forth in the begin- 
ning from the same life cell! — but even admitting 
it to be true, still the question arises as to where that 
primordial germ got its life. And not only so but 
we want to know how that life became so amazingly 
differentiated along its 50,000 lines from the 
moUusk to the man, and how every order became 
so beautifully adapted to its environment. Life 
had a beginning. To that all agree. It was . not 
the result of spontaneous generation. That, too, 
is admitted. It did not cause itself. That is self- 
evident. How then shall we account for its origin 



Trying the Keys. 41 

and for its development, everywhere full of marks 
of intelligence not to say beneficence ? That it 
was the work of chance is an idea that no sane per- 
son can entertain for a moment. This key we 
must set aside. The one to which we come 
next is 

UNCONSCIOUS ENERGY. 

This is the key which Herbert Spencer gives to 
the world as the means whereby to unlock its mys- 
teries. Now an unconscious energy is something 
that acts blindly and unintelligently. It doesn't 
know what it does. It cannot plan, it cannot fore- 
see, it cannot recall, it cannot reason, for these are 
the peculiar qualities of personality. An energy 
that is unconscious must of necessity be impersonal. 
Says Frederic Harrison, as quoted by Lyman Ab- 
bott, ''Mr. Spencer's 'energy' has no analogy with 
God. It is eternal, infinite, incomprehensible, but 
it is not He, but it." This, then, is the key which 
one of the greatest philosophers of our own day 
proposes — a soulless, mindless, heartless, eternal 
IT. But let me ask you to consider how we can 
explain order and design, and adaptation of means 
to ends, and life with all its wonderful differentia- 
tions, by an infinite it. If it takes a person, an 



42 Foundation Stones. 

intelligent being, to build a house, or paint a pic- 
ture, or chisel out a statue, can it be possible that 
a mere thing, a vague impersonality, ever built 
the worlds, or painted the lilies, or fashioned the 
human body ? If it takes a thinking being to ac- 
count for the less by what stretch of fancy or vio- 
lence of logic, can the greater be accounted for by 
an IT, however huge ? Our scientific men run up 
and down the earth and here and there they find 
caves and mounds and ancient tools and ruins and 
they say: "These are the work of pre-historic 
races. " They are very certain that no it ever pro- 
duced them, for they show too clearly the traces of 
intelligence. And may I not ask to what or whom 
point the manifold marks of intelligence, written 
all over the earth and the sky ? To an it ? To 
believe that would require as large an amount of 
credulity as belongs to any benighted heathen 
that anywhere bows down to stocks and stones 
this Sabbath day. No, "unconscious energy" 
does not satisfy us. It leaves the facts unex- 
plained, the lock still fastened, and we must seek 
elsewhere. Another key offered us is that of 

NATURAL LAW. 

We are told that the only explanation of the 



Trying the Keys. 43 

facts of the universe is to be found in the laws of 
nature, and for the interpretation of these laws we 
must turn to science. This is the last court of 
appeal. We can seek no higher, for there is noth- 
ing higher. Says Holyoake, the founder of 
secularism: ''Nature refers us to science for help, 
and to humanity for sympathy; love to the lovely 
is our only homage; study, our own praise; quiet 
submission to the inevitable, our duty; and truth is 
our only worship." Let us then try this key of 
natural law about which we read and hear so 
much. Very pertinently has it been said: ''Did 
law ever do anything? Can it by any possi- 
bihty do anything ? Never! neither in the 
world of men nor in the world of matter. Law is 
never anything but a statement of the way in 
which things are done, have been done, or will be 
done. Congress passes a law to dredge out the 
Mississippi river. But will the law dredge it ? By 
no means. Engineers and engines and workmen 
will dredge it in accordance with the method 
which the law has prescribed. The law directs, 
but does nothing." We speak of laws prohibiting 
this and that crime. But the law in and of itself 
prohibits nothing. It simply points out the way 



44 Foundation Stones. 

in which intelligent, determined, order-loving men 
are to proceed in the suppression of crime. With- 
out living, acting men behind it, it is dead and 
useless. 

The books tell us that it is a universal law that 
every two bodies attract each other with a force 
proportioned directly to the quantity of matter 
they contain, and inversely to the squares of their 
distances. But that is only the statement of a fact 
discovered by Newton. The law does not attract, 
but simply tells us how the force operates. Here 
is a machine. It was made to run in a certain 
way. That is its law, but the law has no power to 
make it run. The moral Jaw says: " Thou shalt 
not steal," but that law did not create honesty. 
We speak of the laws of health, but we do not 
mean that those laws are the authors of health. 
We mean simply that if we pursue a certain line of 
conduct we shall avoid disease. The laws are 
merely sign-boards telling us which road to take, 
but the sign-boards themselves can never carry us 
to the place where health is. Law, then, can pro- 
duce nothing, and is, therefore, entirely inade- 
quate to explain the facts of nature. But leaving 
this let me ask you to consider some facts con- 
nected with 



Trying the Keys. 45 

HUMAN LIFE AND SOCIETY. 

We shall begin with the individual. Every man 
has a moral nature, a something which leads him 
not only to distinguish between right and wrong, 
but to approve the one and condemn the other. 
There is an inner voice which insists upon being 
heard. We may hush it for a season but it will 
speak again with greater emphasis than ever. 
Lady Macbeth could choke it out long enough to 
compass the murder of King Duncan, but after the 
cowardly crime it broke forth like a pent-up fire 
and thinking aloud she exclaimed: 

" Here's the smell of blood still. All 
The perfumes of Arabia will not 
Sweeten this little hand." 

After the massacre of St. Bartholomew, Charles 
IX was in such an agony of remorse that he 
sweat great drops of blood. And you may re- 
member how Richard III cried out in his tent on 
the night before Bosworth Battle, as he fronted the 
ghosts of the murdered princes and his murdered 
wife. We know, too, in our own individual ex- 
perience that there is something in us which, like 
Banquo's ghost, will not down. It brings the 
wrong deed which we have committed to our re- 



46 Foundation Stones. 

membrance in a way that is anything bat pleasant. 
It has frequently banished sleep and made us posi- 
tively miserable. It has driven many a man out 
of his hiding place to confess his crime before the 
world. We call it conscience, and every one of 
us has heard its voice. We are as sure of its exist- 
ence within us as we are that we have minds that 
can think, and hearts that can feel. "Weave 
around this fact all the casuistry you will," says 
an eloquent writer, ' 'and tell me if you choose with 
Hume, and Volney, and Voltaire that 'I ought' in 
Constantinople simply means 'I ought not' in Lon- 
don, still the fact remains that God made man 
with this omnipresent 'I ought' implanted in his 
nature." That conscience sometimes points in 
contrary directions is a matter with which we are 
not now concerned. Every truth has been abused 
by groping, stumbling man. So, no doubt, has 
conscience. But conscience is 2, fact which must 
be accounted for. If it be said that conscience is 
the result of education it will be sufficient to reply 
that education originates nothing. As the etymol- 
ogy of the word implies it simply draws forth, or 
develops that which already exists. Education 
does not produce the will, nor the memory, nor 



Trying the Keys. 47 

the imagination. All it does or can do is to train 
and strengthen them. To say, therefore, that 
conscience is merely a matter of education would be 
to make a verj^ thoughtless speech. 

Nor can it be explained by Chance, or Uncon- 
scious Energy, or Natural Law, for conscience be- 
longs to mind and these are mere things. There 
can be nothing moral or immoral about that which 
is impersonal, and, since like begets like, the exist- 
ence of a moral sense everywhere among men 
argues the existence of a moral source. Another 
fact very closely akin to this: Man has 

THE IDEA OF GOD. 

This is not and cannot be denied. Every known 
lansruaore on the face of the earth contains a word 
which stands for God. The idea of a Supreme 
Being is found among all the tribes and races of 
our planet. Said Cicero long ago: "There is no 
people so wild and savage as not to have believed 
in a God, even if they have been unacquainted 
with his nature," and that statement has been 
amply corroborated by the passing centuries. The 
Zeus of the Greeks, the Jupiter of the Romans, 
the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Odin of the Scan- 
dinavians, the Great Spirit of the North American 



48 Foundation Stones. 

Indians, the Infinite Being recognized by Confu- 
cius and Zoroaster, the Jehovah of the Jew — all 
bear testimony to its truth. Thro' all the ages, in 
every land and in every clime, runs the idea of one 
Eternal God. Admitting that it has been grossly 
abused and hideously caricatured, "still even in 
the midst of such deformity its original features 
may be recognized." The idea itself is a fact, and 
what we are after is something that will account 
for these profoundly suggestive facts. 

So far as I am personally concenaed I believe 
that the idea of God is innate, that it is a part of the 
original furniture of the mind, but I willingly ac- 
cept the proposition of the man who stands at the 
head of American infidelity that "man has no 
ideas except those suggested by his surroundings," 
and I ask, whence then comes the idea of God ? I 
put it in the form of a syllogism. Man can have 
no ideas except those suggested by his surround- 
ings. But man has the idea of God. Therefore 
man is surrounded by God. Belabor your brain 
as much as you will, conjure up all sorts of fonns, 
let fancy do its utmost, and you find that you have 
been simply recombining old material. You have 
created nothing. The subject matter existed be- 



Trying the Keys. 49 

fore, and if it had not you could not have thought 
of it at all. Since, then, from the earliest ages 
man has had the thought of God, it follows that 
God is. But I must not anticipate. We are try- 
ing the keys, seeking a reasonable explanation of 
certain facts. 

Here for example is another great fact which 
shines like a star in the night of the past, viz. : 

THE TRIUMni OF RIGHT. 

We have seen it borne down by might, trampled 
upon, so nearly crushed out that we have said: " It; 
is gone; it can never survive," but we looked 
again and behold, it blazed up like a resistless and 
conquering fire. We saw it in Egypt, making 
bricks without straw, oppressed, ground down, op- 
posed, and we said: "Its end is near. A little 
while longer and it will be no more," but it was 
not long until we heard it rending the heavens 
with triumphant song on the Canaan side of the 
Red Sea. Another time we saw it hunted and 
persecuted among the hills of Palestine; we saw it 
thrust into dungeons and burnt at the stake; we 
saw* all the prestige, all the wealth, all the armies 
of earth's greatest Empire arrayed against it, and 
we said, " This is too much. The right must 



60 Foundation Stones. 



perish, for all the powers of this world are seeking 
to destroy it," but lo! in a few years we beheld 
these very powers and dominions bowing the 
knee before it and doing it homage. I have read 
of a German Countess, who, being about to die, 
ordered that her grave be covered with a solid 
granite slab; that around it should be placed solid 
blocks of stone, and the whole fastened together 
with strong iron clasps, and on the stone be cut 
these words: ''This burial place, purchased to all 
eternity, must never be opened." Thus she defied 
the Almighty. But a little seed sprouted under 
the covering, and the tiny shoot found its way 
thro' between two of the slabs, and grew there 
slowly and surely until it burst the clasps asunder, 
and, lifting the immense blocks, the structure ere 
long became a confused mass of rocks, among 
which, in verdure and beauty, defying wind and 
storm, grew a mighty oak. 

So we have seen the Right burst every sepul- 
chre in which men have tried to bury it, make its 
way out of every imprisonment, and lift itself in 
triumph above the barriers of Might and Wrong, 
and, like the oak, throw out its sheltering branches 
to protect the poor and the weak and the helpless. 



Trymg the Keys. 61 

No lesson is more plainly written on the pages of 
the past than this, that the battle is not to the 
strong; the race is not to the swift. 

" Speak, History, who are life's victors? Un- 
roll thy long annals and say — 

Are they those whom the world called the 
victors who won the success of a day? 

The martyrs or Nero? The Spartans who 
fell at Thermopylae's tryst, 

Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or 
Socrates? Pilate or Christ?" 

Here, then, is another great fact that calls for 
an explanation — the triumph of Right. There is 
something in the universe that "makes for right- 
eousness," that favors it and brings it ultimately 
to the front. It may be that Lowell is not far out 
of the way when he sings: — 

' ' Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong for- 
ever on the throne, — 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and 
behind the dim unknown, 

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping 
watch above his own." 

At any rate there seems to be something ' 'within 
the shadows" exceedingly jealous of the Right, 
for sooner or later it conquers all opposition and 



52 Foundation Stones. 

wears the crown of victory. Now let me ask you 
to reflect for a moment upon that wondrous thing 
which we call 

HUMAN SOCIETY. 

Consider the endless varieties of men that com- 
pose it: — wise men and foolish men, brave men 
and cowardly men, ''the generous and the mean, 
the unsuspecting and the distrustful, the earnest 
soul that prays for the race like an intercessor, and 
the villain whose life never heightened and soft- 
ened into a prayer for any living soul." Consider 
its divisions, its enmities, its mighty contrasts, its 
comedies and tragedies, its clashing principles, its 
battles, the diligence with which its members have 
sought to destroy one another — and yet out of it 
all society comes purer and better and stronger 
than before. Nation rises against nation, war 
reaps its harvest of blood, famine throws its deso- 
lating wing over states and continents, pestilence 
cuts swath upon swath thro' the fields of life, in- 
dividuals die by thousands and tens of thousands, 
''the whole earth is ripped and scarred with 
tombs," but society is immortal. We have seen 
it convulsed by revolution, we have seen it torn in 
simder by civil and religious strife, we have seen 



Trying the Keys. 53 

it hurled into chaos by the reckless hand of 
anarchy, we have seen it writhing in the grip of 
contending factions, we have seen it, like a dis- 
mantled ship, swept by the tempest, the play- 
thing of the angry billows, and yet somehow or 
other it has come out of every storm safer, more 
staunch, more sea-worthy than ever. For a long 
time historians thought that society was simply a 
disordered mass of human beings — a tangled web 
of twisted and crossing threads, without pattern 
or design, but they have learned better. They 
have discovered that the confusion is all on the 
surface; they have found that there is a Gulf Cur- 
rent setting grandly thro' the ages on whose 
bosom society is being steadily carried to higher 
and better things. Here, then, is another great 
fact to be accounted for. The lock does not yield 
to any key we have found yet. In our next lect- 
ure we shall try the key which Christianity 
offers. Till then some of us will find comfort and 
hope in the belief so sweetly expressed by 
Whittier: 

" Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 

And tossed by storm and flood, 
To one fixed stake my spirit clings: 

I know that God is good." 



54 Foundation Stones. 



Christianity s Key. 



'■^ Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth; 
and the heavens are the work of thy hands, ^' — Psalms 

I02: 2^. 

In closing our lecture last Sabbath evening it 
was announced that to-night we would apply to this 
wondrous lock of the universe the key which Chris- 
tianity offers. Before doing so, however, I want to 
call your attention to a few more facts. Many in- 
deed must be passed by for lack of time, but in 
justice to our subject we cannot omit those that are 
most salient and significant. Besides, in trying the 
keys, it is desirable to have as wide a range of facts 
as possible in order that we may decide which of 
the keys, on the whole, furnishes the best solution. 
Proceeding, then, along the line which we have 
been following for the last two Sabbath evenings, 
let me direct your thought to the 

TRACES OF BENEVOLENCE 

stamped so plainly upon the works of nature. These 



Christianity"^ s Key, 55 

have already been hinted at, as for example, in the 
adaptation of animals to their surroundings, as if 
special arrangement had been made for their com- 
fort beforehand, and in the floating of ice upon the 
water contrary to the general law of nature that 
bodies contract as they become colder. Under this 
head, too, we must place the order which everywhere 
reigns in the universe, by which man and beast are 
led to trust Nature and to prepare themselves for 
future contingencies. But this they could not do 
if things were irregular, spasmodic, uncertain, 
without system or harmonious succession. Sup- 
pose Night and Day should become tired of pro- 
ceeding in the same order forever, and should de- 
cide to break up the monotony by bursting upon 
the world at unexpected times. Or suppose the 
Seasons were to mutiny and break ranks and march 
through the years with all the confusion of a mob 
— what would the husbandman do ? How could 
he tell when to sow his seed ? Or suppose the 
streams should take a notion to start back to the 
hills — what would become of the mills and facto- 
ries that depend on water power ? You see, then, 
though you may never have thought of it before, 
that order is an evidence of kindness. The truth 



66 Foundation Stones. 

is, wherever we turn we behold indications of be- 
nevolence. We see it in the luscious fruit hanging 
in clusters from the vines and falling from the 
branches of the tree. We see it in the harvests that 
billow in the fields, and fill our granaries with seed 
for the sower and bread for the eater. We see it 
in the touches of beauty that everywhere charm the 
eye as we look out over the landscape. We detect 
it in the song of the wind and the splash of the 
brook. And not only so but on a larger and grander 
scale in the contour and conformation of the conti- 
nents. Europe, with its hills and northern latitude, 
would be cold and comparatively barren but for the 
great furnace of the Sahara burning at its feet and 
sending warm currents of air away over the Alps 
and the Pyrenees. Transfer the Andes to the east- 
ern coast of South America and the trade winds 
could not carry the vapors of the ocean into the 
heart of the continent. The result would be that 
the great plains of the Amazon would be an unin- 
habitable desert. Or suppose in North America 
the Rocky Mountains extended from east to west, 
at about the 45th parallel, thus cutting off the polar 
winds, the larger part of the United States would be 
African in temperature, and its vast plains would 



Christianity's Key. 57 

lie scorched and dead beneath burning skies. Thus 
if you will take the pains to reflect upon it you will 
see that the existing arrangement of things in the 
world of nature is full of kindness, and seems to 
point to a benevolent cause. It would be interest- 
ing to dwell here but time forbids. In dismissing 
it let me ask you to ask yourselves how this bias of 
nature toward benevolence is to be accounted for ? 
Why is nature not cruel ? If it is blind and heart- 
less and mindless, why is it so constructed as on 
the whole to contribute happiness rather than mis- 
ery ? The inquiry is certainly scientific for it points 
to the explanation of a great fact. Now we pass 
to the consideration of two or three additional facts 
connected with human life and society. Take for 
example 

THE DESIRES OF THE HUMAN HEART. 

Nothing is more evident than that man does not 
and cannot find complete satisfaction in the things 
of this life. He is constantly reaching after some- 
thing higher, after something beyond. Alexander 
weeping because there were no more worlds to con- 
quer only illustrates the fact that man has a capac- 
ity for happiness which this earth is not large 
enough to fill. Now, in nature I notice these two 



58 Foundation Stones. 

laws everywhere: First, that wherever an animal 
or a plant has certain needs or capacities or desires, 
abundant provision is made to satisfy them. If 
the bird wants a peculiar kind of food it never fails 
to find it. If it has a migratory disposition, and at 
certain seasons longs for the sunny south-land, and 
spreads its wings to search therefor it always dis- 
covers it. If the bee wants honey every flower of 
the field and forest has a chalice full of it. If the 
plant calls for light and air and heat and moisture, 
these desired — for things respond saying: * 'Here we 
are." The second law is that animals and plants 
^'become all they are capable of being; all that 
belongs to their nature is fully developed; all their 
capacities are fully exercised, and all their wants 
fully satisfied." The acorn contains within it the 
promise and potency of an oak, that is all. Beyond 
that it can never go. When the caterpillar bursts 
its little cocoon and comes forth a butterfly, it has 
attained the end of its development. The mere 
plant or animal soon reaches its limit. But this is 
not true of man. He never reaches a point where 
he can say: "I can go no farther." He is always 
capable of more. The world does not yield him 
all he wants. He reaches . after something more 



Christianity'' s Key. 59 

thaD time and sense can afford. He has aspira- 
tions, he has longings, he has cravings for fellow- 
ship with some power far above himself. He 
knows he is greater than the things he sees around 
him; he can rise above them, he can control them, 
he can make them his servants; and yet, conscious 
of his power, he feels his weakness, his dependence, 
his need of support and help from some source 
higher than himself. It is these desires, these 
out-reachings, this unrest, this sense of insuffi- 
ciency, that leads him to build altars and engage 
in acts of worship. Now, if the instinct of the 
animal never deceives it; if it never points to 
something that does not exist; if the duckling can- 
not be imposed upon by being hatched by a hen, 
but finds the water with unfailing certainty; if 
birds of passage make no mistake when they fly 
in search of a more genial clime; if the lower 
animals find all they want and all they look for, 
can it be possible that man is to be forever mocked 
and deluded when he craves for that which is 
boundless and eternal ? Can it be possible that he 
alone of all organized beings has a hunger for 
which there is no satisfaction ? Will nature be 
true to a bird, or a fish, or a bee, or a beast, and 



60 Foundation Stones. 

be false to man, her crown and her king? 1 can- 
not believe it; for such a belief is unreasonable. 
It is unwarranted by the whole course of things. 
I cannot believe that man is playing the fool when 
he seeks for answers to the deepest and most per- 
sistent questionings of his soul. At any rate the 
scientific spirit demands an adequate explanation 
of these desires of the universal heart which every- 
where manifest themselves in acts of worship. 
But we must pass on. 

In the next place consider — 

THE INEQUALITIES AND INJUSTICES OF 
HUMAN SOCIETY. 

Here the knave prospers and flourishes like the 
green bay-tree; there the good man suffers and 
grapples with poverty. In this house the man 
who never prays succeeds in every enterprise; in 
that the saint whose knees are calloused with de- 
votion is baffled in every undertaking. Yonder 
on that street, rolling in wealth, surrounded by 
every comfort that money can buy, with men- 
servants and women-servants to do his bidding, 
lives a man who has trampled upon every law of 
decency and justice; on the next, battling hard to 
keep the wolf from the door, in a house scantily 



Christianity's Key. 61 

furnished, with want sometimes looking in through 
the cui-tainless windows, dwells a man whom 
money cannot bribe nor appetite turn from the 
path of righteousness. Brilliant roguery is often 
applauded and lifted on high, while honest poverty 
often toils on in obscurity. The cunning, schem- 
ing, imscrupulous man who never drew an honest 
breath, and who never has a thought but for hini- 
self, frequently becomes the favored child of 
luxury, while many a one whose whole life is de- 
voted to the welfare of his fellowmen, never gets 
more than a bare livelihood. In proof of what I 
say, let me give you two or three striking ex- 
amples gathered from my reading. 

There was George Villiers, second Duke of 
Buckingham, one of the most talented of men. 
But his great talents were prostituted to intrigue, 
duplicity, treason and the most shameless pro- 
fligacy. He was a man supremely selfish, and 
consequently supremely bad. Yet, notwithstand- 
ing, he was treated with marked distinction and 
honored with burial among the great of West- 
minster Abbey. Now contrast with him John 
Howard, the philanthropist. Falling heir to a 
considerable fortune he might have lived in ease 



62 Foundation Stones. 

and comfort, but he did not choose to do so. On 
his way to Lisbon to do what he could for the suf- 
ferers in the great earthquake of 1775, he was 
captured by a French privateer and thrust into 
prison. This, with some experience gained after- 
ward as county sheriff among the prisons of Eng- 
land, led him to take up the work of prison re- 
form with which his name will be forever asso- 
ciated. We know with what self-sacrificing 
heroism he travelled up and down through Europe 
like an angel of mercy, and how he finally forfeited 
his noble life in the south of Russia as the price of 
his devotion to suffering humanity. Now this I 
say, that if there is no hereafter, no God who will 
set the balances right in another world and re- 
ward the good man for his goodness, and punish 
the bad man for his crimes, John Howard was a 
fool and those who imitate his example are no 
better. 

Or take Nero, the most unprincipled and blood- 
thirsty wretch that ever disgraced a throne. In- 
debted to his mother for the crown he dishonored, 
"he caused her to be murdered, as well as 
his wife, and the celebrated writers, Seneca, 
Lucan, Petronius and others." "His cruelties 



Christianity's Key. 63 

were incredible, his wickedness unspeakable. " He 
is charged with having set Rome on fire in or- 
der that his vanity might be flattered by rebuild- 
ing it with greater magnificence than ever. For 
nine days the conflagration raged, and awful be- 
yond description were the groans of the dying and 
the lamentations of survivors for loved ones lost. 
Meanwhile, the historian tells us, Nero was play- 
ing on his lyre. But this was only the beginning 
of horrors. It began to be whispered here and 
there among the populace that their own Emperor 
was the author of the great calamity, and to divert 
suspicion from himself he formally and deliberately 
charged the fiendish crime upon the Christians. 
The efiect was shocking, fearful, and even at the 
distance of 1800 years, throws over us a chill of 
horror. Murder went forth to its fell harvest. 
"In the gardens of Nero Christians were crucified, 
sewn in hides of wild beasts, thrown before the 
dogs, enveloped with some inflammable stuff*, raised 
on poles, and used as torches!" But now over 
against Nero set his illustrious contemporary, the 
Apostle Paul, whom he beheaded. The one burn- 
ing, slaying, destroying, and "fiddling" in the 
midst of unparalleled disaster, yet living in afliu- 



64 Foundation Stones. 

ence and grandeur; the other comforting, saving, 
building up, weeping with those who wept, and 
pouring all the wealth of his great heart upon sin- 
smitten humanity; — yet hunted, persecuted, im- 
prisoned, stoned, shipwrecked, counting not his 
life dear unto himself, but laboring with consum- 
ing zeal to bless his fellowmen. Looking upon 
these two pictures, I ask if there is a man here 
who can convince himself that it all ended at the 
edge of the tomb ? Does not every sentiment of 
justice and every dictate of reason require us to be- 
lieve that there must be a future tribunal and a 
righteousjudge from whom the Emperor and the 
Apostle will receive the due reward of their deeds? 
These cases I have selected from history not be- 
cause they are isolated, but because they are con- 
spicuous and well known to us all. 

Human society everywhere is full of these in- 
equahties. The heroic Haddock dies a martyr to 
a great cause; his murderer goes free and the li- 
quor traffic continues to prosper. A brother falls, 
covered with a score of wounds received in defend- 
ing his sister's honor, while the slayer and ravisher 
roams at large. Ten thousand brave boys, turn- 
ing away from the ties and comforts of domestic 



Christianity'' s Key. 65 

life, go forth to fight for the flag they love, and fall 
with their faces to the foe, cut down in the very 
flower of their youth, while ten thousand cowardly 
knaves stay at home and reap the benefits of their 
valor. 

But why should men sacrifice themselves and 
lay their lives upon this or that altar if this life- 
story is to have no sequel on the other side of the 
cemetery ? I hold that no man can give a satisfac- 
tory answer to that question who substitutes chance 
or unconscious energy, or natural law, or anything 
else, for a personal and holy God. ' 'If you could 
persuade the tenement house population of New 
York," says Nordofi", "that there is no future life 
beyond the grave, they would sack the Fifth 
avenue over night," and the same might be said of 
the tenement-house population of other cities. 
Humanity at bottom believes in a throne that is 
great and a throne that is white; if it did not, noth- 
ing could resist the march of anarchy. Is this be- 
lief a mockery? Are these hopes of the soul 
to have no fruition ? Is there no world beyond 
where the heroisms of earth will receive their just 
mead of praise, and the crimes of earth their proper 
punishment? I venture no aflSrmative reply 



66 Foundation Stones. 

as yet, but ask you to follow me patiently while I 
apply to these great facts the 

KEY OF CHEISTIANITY. 

This key I need not remind you is the God of 
the Bible. No man hath seen him at any time, for 
he is invisible. But we have learned that the 
greatest things in the universe are out of sight, 
and not only so but that they control and rule the 
things that are visible. Mind cannot be seen, 
love cannot be seen, music cannot be seen, gravi- 
tation cannot be seen. We know them only by 
their efiects as we know the wind. Hence reason- 
ing from analogy, if there is a God at all we would 
expect him to be unseen. So far, therefore, as 
Christianity presents us with an invisible Creator 
it commends itself to our judgment. 

The God of Christianity is intelligent and all- 
wise. He is set forth as one who knows the end 
from the beginning. Now we have seen that the 
universe is full of traces of intelligence. Among 
these are order, design, adaptation of means to 
ends, all of which are indications of plan But a 
plan must always be conceived before it is em- 
bodied. The architect, for example, elaborates 
the plan of the house before he begins to build. 



Christianity'^ s Key. 67 

Moreover a plan is as inseparable from thought as 
shadow from substance, and thought implies a 
thinker. Thus we are driven to an intelligent 
first cause, and this Christianity supplies in the 
personal and absolute God. 

So if the great fact of life, with its abundance 
and amazing differentiatioas, is to be accounted 
for, Christianity points us to the living, self-exis- 
tent Creator, and we are compelled to admit that 
this is the only explanation that will meet all the 
necessities of the case. Is kindness stamped upon 
the face of nature ? Christianity says there is a 
benevolent God, and the answer seems sufficient. 

We have found, too, that there is a conscience 
in man, a universal monitor that warns of a judg- 
ment to come. Nothing can permanently silence 
its voice. 

"Yet still there whispers the small voice within, 
Heard thro' God's silence, and o'er glory's din ; 
Whatever creed be taught or land be trod, 
Man's conscience is the oracle of God." 

Whether we believe these words of Byron or 
not, nothing else but the docti'ine they teach can 
explain the fact. If there is no God, conscience is 
inexplicable, Init under the light of Christianity, 



68 Foundation Stones. 

which declares that there is a righteous God who 
can by no means clear the guilty, a moral gover- 
nor to whom every man is accountable, the mys- 
tery clears up. It cannot be denied that in some 
way or other Christianity has hit upon a very happy 
and masterly solution of the conscience problem. 

In like manner if we want to account for the ulti- 
mate triumph of right; if we are concerned to un- 
derstand why it is that in the long run all things, 
as Emerson says, ''assume a hostile front to vice," 
we shall have no trouble if we accept the God of 
Christianity. For this religion shows us an eternal 
Being, with whom a thousand years are but as one 
day and one day as a thousand years, one who 
loves righteousness with all the power of an infinite 
heart. It tells us of a God who dwells in the 
calm eternity, who is never in a hurry, the pendu- 
lum of whose great clock swings in a measureless 
arc, and who will accomplish his purposes in his 
own time. It represents him as being himself the 
Great Captain of the forces of truth and hence the 
church is moved to sing : — 

"From victory unto victory 
His army shall be lead 
Till every foe is vanqiiished 
And Christ is Lord indeed." 



Christianity's Key, 69 

Nothing but the God of Christianity can ac- 
count for the triumph of right as we see it in the 
long sweep of history. But this key does open the 
lock ; it explains the fact, it clears up the diflSculties. 

Or if we are puzzled about human society — how 
to account " for progress amid collision, for rest 
amid strife, for solidity amid earthquake and 
whirlwind," for stability amid change ; if we seek 
for some adequate interpretation of these desires 
of the human heart ; if we want to know why man 
alone of all organized beings fails to reach com- 
pleteness in this life ; if we want to account for 
conscience ; if we demand a reasonable explanation 
of the wrongs and inequalities of human society ; 
how it is that, while right conquers in the long run, 
within man's span of seventy years, innocence 
sometimes suffers and guilt sometimes goes free ; 
why the strong man dies and the cripple 
lives on ; why the babe drops like a bud from the 
family tree ere it has learned to say "mother," 
while the old man, decrepit, infirm, helpless, 
lingers on far into life's winter ; — if we want 
answers to such questions as these Christianity's 
one great reply is — God, God. And if any man 
can find another answer so full, so complete, so 



70 Foundation Stones. 

satisfactory, so sublime, let him bring it forth. 
When it comes there will be no mistaking its 
quality. It will stand upon its merits and be its 
own vindication. The world has been waiting and 
looking for such an answer thro' all the weary 
centuries but never has it found one that begins to 
approach this ; "Of old Thou hast laid the founda- 
tions of the earth and the heavens are the work of 
thy hands." To every other key that human 
wisdom has ever tried the lock refuses to respond, 
but to that of Christianity it opens at once, and 
most beautifully. It is equal to the occasion. It 
meets the issue squarely. It accounts for the 
facts. 

Not that it explains everything. I make no 
such assertion. It has many secrets to reveal but 
we cannot bear them now. We are primary 
pupils, and primary pupils must wait and plod 
along and toil up before they can know all that is 
going on in the High School. You might say to 
me, "I accept the proposition that God is the 
author of all things, if you please, but I cannot 
rest there ; I must push the inquiry farther. I 
want to know who is the author of God." There 
can be no objection to that. We must put no 



Christianity'' s Key. 71 

shackles upon the intellect. And I reply, ''Urge 
your question as to who made God, follow it up, 
seek, knock, thunder against every barred door in 
the universe and see what will come of it.'' Of 
this 1 am sure, that before you have continued 
your quest a great while, like the dove sent out 
from Noah's Ark, you will long for some resting 
place, some rock secure and eternal on which to 
plant your feet. 

We must not think that we are going to get rid 
of mystery ; seeing is a mystery, hearing is a 
mystery, the throbbing of the heart is a mystery, 
we live and move and have our being in mystery. 
If therefore you expect us to clear up all the mys- 
teries that gather about our subject, you are going 
to be mightily disappointed. But this I say, that 
the key with which we are now working fits the 
lock so well and gives such a satisfactory explana- 
tion of the facts that no unprejudiced mind can set 
it aside as insufficient. As it opens door after 
door in this house of many mansions we can but 
conclude that we have the right key. This, then, 
is our first great foundation stone — the rock on 
which we build, God, God. What though it dips 
away into the unknown on every side, far, far be- 



Y2 Fowfidation Stones. 

yond the reach of every plummet ever let down by 
human hands, enough that it lifts itself above the 
waves sufficiently to afford hope and rest and se- 
curity to all who will row thro' the billows to its 
friendly refuge. On that Rock we stand and wait 
and look away, assured that the shadows will lift 
by and by. Before we are done we trust that 
every man among you will join us so that with one 
heart and one conviction we may sing : — 

' ' Rock of ages cleft for me, 

Let me hide myself in thee." 

Amen. 



Among the Gods. 73 



Among the Gods. 



'■'■Among the gods there is none like unto thee^ O Lord'' 
—Psalms 86: 8. 

As the man of science goes out into the world of 
nature or into human society and gathers up all 
the facts he can find with a view to giving them a 
reasonable explanation, so that is the method we 
have decided to adopt in these lectures. We are 
massing facts of a certain kind and trying to give 
them a rational interpretation. If the man who 
takes his little hammer and goes chipping here and 
there among the rocks, or goes with his scalpel 
seeking to cut his way to the mysteries of the hu- 
man body, or becomes an expert in classifying 
birds, or even bugs, and explaining their habits, is 
entitled to be called a scientist, may not the men 
who essay to account for the greater facts to which 
our attention has been directed, modestly claim a 
right to the same distinction ? Leaving the ques- 
tion with you let me say that to-night we are to 



74 Foundation Stones, 

spend half an hour among the gods. The great 
champion of infidelity in this country has said that 
'* Every nation creates its own God." But the as- 
sertion is not by any means new. Among German 
Kationalists, Feuerbach taught that "Man created 
God after his own image." So, in the same strain, 
Prof. Clifibrd says: "From the dim dawn of his- 
tory, and from the inmost depth of every soul, the 
face of our father Man looks out upon us, and with 
the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, says: ' Be- 
fore Jehovah was, I Am.'" No doubt man has 
made a great many gods, and endowed them with 
his own passions and appetites and jealousies and 
weaknesses, as I think we shall see, but I think, 
also, that we shall come to a certain point beyond 
which some other explanation will be found neces- 
sary to account for the facts. I desire in this lect- 
ure to contrast the gods of Paganism with the God 
of the Bible. First, let us look at some of the 

GODS OF THE EAST. 

Brahmanism, as you know, is the ancient and 
aristocratic religion of India. According to this 
religion Brahma was in the beginning supreme, 
sole and self-existent. "He willed to create various 
creatures out of his own substance. Accordingly, 



Among the Gods. 75 

by meditation, he produced the waters; into them 
he put a seed, which developed into a golden Qgg. " 
That Qgg^ we are told, contained the seeds of all 
future worlds, and not only so, but into this mar- 
velous egg we are informed that Brahma himself 
entered. There he sat, brooding and vivifying and 
hatching for 4,300 millions of years ! "During this 
amazing period, the wondrous e^g floated like a 
bubble on the abyss of primeval waters, increasing 
in size, and blazing refulgent as a thousand suns. 
At length the Supreme who dwelt therein burst the 
shell of the stupendous Qgg and issued forth under 
a new form, with a thousand heads, a thousand 
eyes, and a thousand arms. Along with him 
there issued forth another form, huge and measure- 
less." This, let me say at once, without prolong- 
ing the quotation, was the universe as we now see 
it in all its glory. In addition to Brahma, the peo- 
ple of India have over 300, 000, 000 of mferior gods, 
so that they are well supplied. Among their ob- 
jects of worship are the cow, the serpent and the 
monkey. Plants too, and certain stones and stately 
rivers receive religious adoration. Indeed their 
pantheism puts God into everything, and makes 
everything a part of God. 



76 Foundation Stones. 

Baddhism, the religion of at least one-third of 
the human race, did not orio^inally recognize any 
personal God or any soul, but afterward its gods 
became very numerous. These consist of images 
and relics of Buddha, as well as the god himself, 
and holy personages who descended to earth to be 
his successors. The only heaven that Buddhism 
has to offer is Nirvana, or absolute annihilation. 

Passing from India to China we find that the 
gods worshipped by that very numerous people are 
for the most part Confucius, Buddha and their own 
ancestors. Now glance for a moment at the 

GODS or EGYPT. 

These were so numerous that when Herodotus 
visited that country in the fifth century, B. C, he 
said it was easier to find a god in Egypt than a 
man. "Every month of the year, every day of 
the month, every hour of the day and night, had 
its presiding divinity." Among their great gods 
were Osiris, Ammon, and Ra, the sun-god. From 
Chamber's Encyclopedia we learn that the Egyp- 
tian gods were divided into three orders. ' ' The 
first contained eight gods, the second twelve, the 
third an unknown number." The Egyptians also 
worshiped animals, the cat, the ibis, the dog- 



Among the Gods. 77 

headed ape, the hawk, the beetle, and I know not 
how many others. From these turn to the 

GODS OF GREECE AND ROME. 

With these I presume we are more familiar. 
They, too, were innumerable. Athens was full of 
them, and when St. Paul visited that city he found 
that the over-scrupulous people, fearing lest they 
might have made some serious omission, had 
erected an altar to ''the Unknown God." In 
Greece every lake, every stream, every hill, every 
grove, had its diety. There were twelve greater 
gods and goddesses who dwelt on Mt. Olympus. 
At the head of these stood Zeus. He was the 
grand-son of the Sky and the Earth, and the son 
of Time, or Saturn. "As Time devours its off- 
spring, so Saturn was said to have had the bad 
habit of eating up his children as fast as they were 
born, till at last his wife Rhea contrived to give 
him a stone in swaddling clothes, and while he 
was biting this hard morsel Jupiter (or Zeus) was 
saved from him." Jupiter had a son whose name 
was Vulcan, the god of fire, at whose smithies in 
the volcanoes, his workmen, the Cyclops, forged 
thunderbolts for his great father. Poor Vulcan 
was lame, and as the gods met one day on Mt. 



78 Foundation Stones. 

Olympus to feast on ambrosia and drink nectar, he 
limped and stumbled so ridiculously as to make 
them all laugh, and they decided to choose the 
beautiful Hebe to take his place. But after a 
while she became very careless and, at one of their 
feasts, tripped and fell, cup and nectar and all. 
This caused them not a little trouble, but gods 
could hardly be expected to be troubled long. 
Turning their eyes away to Mt. Ida in the distance 
they saw a very handsome youth, Ganymedes by 
name, watching his flocks, and Jupiter sent his 
eagle to pounce upon him and bring him to 
Olympus. Of course he came and things went on 
smoothly once more. 

Sometimes these old gods of Greece got drunk. 
Sometimes they indulged in unspeakable orgies ; 
sometimes they quarrelled ; sometimes they went 
to war. Among them there were jealousies, in- 
trigues, scolding, wife-beating, violence, theft, adul- 
tery, murder, and in fact all the crimes of the 
calender. Hermes was the god of thieves and all 
kinds of rogues. He stole everything he could 
get his hands on, from the oxen of Admetus to the 
sceptre of Jupiter. The way Vulcan came to be 
lame was that his father kicked him out of heaven 



Among the Gods. 79 

for taking his mother's part in a family fracas, and, 
after falling for a whole day, he alighted upon the 
isle of Lemnos and was pretty badly shaken up as 
we may suppose. Who has not heard of Jupiter's 
terrible fight with the Titans ? They were a race 
of awful giants, one of whom Briareus, who had a 
hundred heads, tried to scale heaven by piling 
mountain upon mountain, for the purpose of fling- 
ing Jupiter down. But just at the proper moment 
Jupiter's head began to ache, and, calling to Vul- 
can, he told him to strike it with his hammer. He 
did so, giving it a tremendous blow, whereupon 
out darted Minerva, fully armed, and by the aid 
of her wise counsels the Titans were defeated. To 
keep them from making any future disturbance 
he buried them beneath their own mountains, 
Etna, Ossa and Pelion, and whenever there was an 
earthquake thereafter it was supposed to be caused 
by these giants struggling to get out, although 
Wiggins has adopted a difierent theory. I trust 
I am not wearying you with this recital, but I want 
you to see what conception the greatest and most 
enlightened people of antiquity had of their gods. 
It will be well for us to remember that the Greeks 
were entertaining these monstrous ideas at about 



80 Foundation Stones. 

the same time David was writing his Psalms and 
the great prophets uttering their rapt and sublime 
predictions. 

In all their essential features the gods of Rome 
were the same as those of Greece. Like all the 
other nations about which I have spoken the old 
Romans had gods without end. Every house had 
its Lares, "every city its guardian spirit, every 
stream its nymph, every wood its faun." Dr. 
Storrs, speaking of the divinities of Rome before 
the advent of Christianity, says : "All gods had 
come to be recognized as local. * * * 

The noblest of the divinities were not imagined to 
take any interest in human virtue. The most pop- 
ular stories current about them were the frightful 
and depraving legends which rehearsed their fu- 
rious passions and amours. " Indeed the Romans 
simply transferred their own lusts, their own ap- 
petites, their own qualities to the gods they 
worshiped. As the old stock deteriorated in 
morals and in force and strength of character 
their gods grew worse and worse. In addition to 
their own peculiar dieties their Pantheon was filled 
with the gods of the nations which they conquered, 
and their worship recognized and allowed. 



Among the Gods. 81 

To the ^ods of our own forefathers, the early 
Anglo-Saxons, I can only take time to refer. 
Suffice it to say that there were plenty of them, 
chief among whom were Odin and Thor, and that 
they were little or no improvement upon the gods 
of Greece and Rome. 

If we turn to the Mohammedan conception of 
God we shall find that it was considerably higher, 
but we should remember that this religion drew 
freely upon Hebrew and Christian sources for its 
ideas. Yet, as has been said, the Mohammedan 
God is ''Astern, absolute, unloving Will, de- 
manding only to be obeyed ; a Being who will 
give to the fullest measure what those who serve 
him most desire — the sensual joy, ever fresh and 
immortal, of drunkenness and of lust." 

Such then are the gods as conceived of by the 
leading nations of the world. I have simply 
touched upon them, but if you will take the pains 
to look the subject up for yourselves you will find 
thom even more earthly and revolting and un- 
divine than I have represented them. In fact 
many of their exploits and intrigues and practices 
arc too utterly al)ominable to be even hinted at. Be- 
fore leaving these gods let me ask you to hold in 
mind the following fncts; concerning them : 



82 Foundation Stones. 

1. They were many. While as Max MuUer 
says there was originally the idea of one Supreme 
God among the nations, it everywhere, except 
among the Jews, became Polytheistic. 

2. They were Local — shut up to certain places 
or certain spheres of dominion as Jupiter to 
heaven, Neptune to the sea, Pluto to hell, and 
so on. 

3. They were limited^ both in knowledge and 
power. Even Zeus was subjected to the immuta- 
ble decrees of fate, while we find that on more 
than one occasion he was deceived and imposed 
upon by some of the smart deities around him. 

4. They were unholy. They yielded to every 
kind of vice and folly. 

5. They were selfish. Their employment con- 
sisted in promoting their own pleasures rather than 
the cause of virtue. They drank and ate and 
caroused, while their ears were regaled by Apollo's 
lute and the songs of the Muses. 

6. They were vindictive. They laid their plans 
and took revenge upon their enemies with mani- 
fest delight. 

7. They were vidnerahle both in body and soul, 
and subject to most of the ills that flesh is heir to. 
Or, 



Among the Gods. 83 

8. They were Pantheistic like Brahma, and con- 
sequently impersonal : — but parts or expressions of 
the universal All. 

It is with a sense of profound relief that we turn 
from these to the 

GOD OF THE BIBLE. 

Let me ask you to note carefully the measure- 
less contrast. It could hardly be greater. 

1. The God of the Bible is One and beside him 
there is none else. "Thus saith the Lord the 
King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts. 
I am the first, and I am the last ; and beside me 
there is no God." (Isa. 44:6.) 

2. The God of the Bible is a Spirit. Many of 
the gods of heathen countries, as we have seen, 
were worshiped under the forms of various 
animals. They inhabited material bodies and 
were material in their mode of action. But the 
God of the Bible is a Spirit and they that worship 
him must worship him in spirit and in truth. 

3. He is the Universal Presence. He secludes 
himself on no Olympus. Ho reigns in no far-off 
heaven whence he issues his decrees. He cannot 
l)e hid in any lake or grove or river. Never in all 
the great eternity can we be nearer to Him than 



84 Foundation Stones. 

at this moment. Search thro' all the books of hu- 
man wisdom and nowhere will you find such sub- 
limity as is expressed in this passage from the 
139thPsalm:— "Whither shall I go from thy 
spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? 
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; if I 
make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I 
take the wings of the morning and dwell in the 
uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall thy 
hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. 
If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even 
the night shall be light about me. Yea, the dark- 
ness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as 
the day ; the darkness and the light are both alike 
to thee." Thus he is represented as filling all 
space and being equally present in all parts of 
creation. 

4. The God of the Bible is All-powerful '' Be- 
hold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by 
thy great power and stretched out arm, and there 
is nothing too hard for thee." (Jer. 32:17.) "But 
Jesus said * * * with God all things are 
possible," (Matt. 19:26) ; and in Revelation we 
have this ascription : " Alleluia, for the Lord God 
omnipotent reigncth." ("Rev. lOrn.") 



Among the Gods. 85 

5. The God of the Bible is All-knowing. *' His 
understanding is infinite," (Ps. 147:5) says the 
Psalmist. '' Hast thou not known ? hast thou not 
heard that the everlasting God the Lord, the 
Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not 
neither is weary ? there is no searching of his 
understanding." (Isa. 40:28.) 

6. The God of the Bible is All-holy. ' ' The Lord 
is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his 
works." (Ps. 145:17.) ''But thou art holy, 
thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel." (Ps. 
22:3.) "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold 
evil, and canst not look on iniquity." (Hab. 1:13.) 
It was hardly so with some of the other gods. 

7. The God of the Bible is eternal. "Before 
the mountains were brought forth or ever thou 
hadst formed the earth and the world even from 
everlasting to everlasting thou art God." (Ps. 
90:2.) "The eternal God is thy refuge and under- 
neath are the everlasting arms." (Deut. 33:27.) 

8. The God ot the Bible is unchangeaUe. 
" Every good gift and every perfect gift is from 
above, and cometh down from the Father of 
lights, with whom is no variableness neither 
shadow of turning." (Jas. 1:17.) "They shall 



86 Foundation Stones. 

perish but thou shalt endure ; yea all of them 
shall wax old like a garment ; as a vesture shall 
thou change them and they shall be changed. But 
thou art the same and thy years shall have no end." 
(Ps. 102:26, 27.) 

9. The God of the Bible is a Father. Jesus 
taught his disciples to pray ' ' Our Father which 
art in heaven." (Matt. 6:9.) " Fear not little 
flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give 
you the kingdom. " (Luke 12:32.) This endear- 
ing title is applied to him a great many times. In 
the Old Testament he is called ''the everlasting 
Father." It is a name of hope, a name of provis- 
ion, a name of protection, a name of indulgence. 
With such a name as that in which to trust we 
can look up. Once more — 

10. The God of the Bible is a God of love. 
"God is love." (1 John 4:8.) Like all the rest 
of his attributes his love is set forth as being infin- 
ite and eternal. He speaks of loving Israel with 
an everlasting love. ''God so loved the world 
that he sent his Son." But I fear you are tired of 
this recital and I shall stop it. It was necessary, 
however, to set these conceptions of the gods over 
against each other that you might see the contrast 



Arnong the Gods. 87 

You see what an infinite gulf there is between 
them. How grand and sublime is that of the 
Bible ; in every way worthy of the holy and 
eternal God. How absurd and ridiculous are 
many of those of the heathen, unworthy even of a 
man. Now, how shall this fact be accounted for ? 
The ancient Jews were surrounded by all sorts of 
idolatrous people, and were constantly running off 
into idolatry themselves. They are not classed 
among the cultured and intelligent nations of an- 
tiquity. They were exclusive and clannish, and 
held no "intercourse with their learned neigh- 
bors.'' And, as like begets like, so they were held 
in contempt by all people that knew anything 
about them. How then, I ask, does it come to 
pass that their writers have given us a conception 
of God transcendently higher than that of 
any other nation — a conception which has 
never been improved upon in all the flight of 
the centuries? Our loftiest conceptions of God 
to-day were anticipated long ago, not in In- 
ilia, not in Greece, not in Egypt, but in Palestine, 
i;y the shepherds and herdsmen and prophets of 
Israel. The Greek and Latin literature is still 
held in admiration by the learned everywhere, but 



88 Foundation Stones. 

the gods of the classics provoke our mirth if they 
they do not excite our disgust, while the God of 
the Bible fills us with awe, reverence and adoration. 

I know very well there have been some hideous 
conceptions of God even within the pale of Chris- 
tendom. Even Christian teachers have been known 
to invest God with their own qualities and create 
Him after their own image. They have clothed 
him with their own narrowness, their own stern- 
ness, their own softness, their own tears and senti- 
mentality. Some have made him cold, unbending, 
unapproachable, with a heart as hard and unsym- 
pathetic as granite, consenting only to love men 
and save them on condition that his innocent Son 
lay down his life for theirs. But the plain teach- 
ing of the Scriptures is that the incarnation, the 
atonement, all the provisions of redeeming grace, 
came out of the love of the eternal Father as the 
stream comes out of the fountain. 

Some have made him too weak to maintain the 
integrity of his own government ; a God whose 
''life is a tumultuous sentiment, rushing like an 
unbanked river into any swamp that will receive 
it and turn it into fetid and barren greenness. " 
He is a God who will never hurt anybody's feeling 



Among the Gods. 89 

by such a rude thing as punishment. In the full- 
ness of his love he will let men do as they please. 
Then when they plunge into all sorts of iniquity he 
will weep ov( r them and sweep them into heaven 
on the tide of his afiection. That is not my God, 
nor do I find him anywhere in the Bible. 

Others again make him a kind of class-God. 
He is monopolized by certain denominations. He 
is found only in their churches, and listens only to 
their pra3^ers. He is an esthetical God whose ears 
cannot endure the broken accents of vulgar suppli- 
cation. Yes, there are such caricatures of God. 
even in Christian lands, but let us not suffer them to 
blind us to the exalted and altogether unparalleled 
conception of the Bible. Turn to the old Book 
Look at the character of God as described therein. 
Confine yourselves to no detached verses, but take 
the description as a whole, and see if it is not all 
that could be desired, noble, peerless and sublime. 
This God of the Bible is just ; but he is also merci- 
ful. He is omnipotent, the strength of the hills is 
his also ; and yet at the same time he is love. He 
is absolutely holy, but any poor penitent sinner 
can find a place in his heart. He inhabits eternity, 
and yet he will make his home in a human breast. 



90 Foundation Stones, 

He is past finding out and yet he reveals himself 
to babes and sucklings. He is a Father, gracious 
and tender and pitiful, while at the same time he is 
not to be trifled with. Though his sovereignty 
throws itself over all worlds and exercises absolute 
dominion it is matched by his all-embracing sym- 
pathy. Thus we have this amazing balance of 
qualities combined and focalized in the Biblical 
conception of God, compared with which all others 
are puerile: ''Torch-lights beneath the meridian 
sun ; tinted vapors before the heaven-high crystal 
air," and we ask whence did it come ? Was it the 
product of the unaided Hebrew mind ? Did the 
writers of the Bible dream this God, or did they 
climb up to the dazzling and stupendous concep- 
tion over the sky-illumined stairway of inspira- 
tion ? The answer hinted at in this last question is 
the only answer that will give us a satisfactory ex- 
planation of the fact. Once admit that the Bible 
is inspired, that holy men of old spake as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost, and the diflSculty 
vanishes. The fact is accounted for. The writers 
themselves were taught of God. Seek to account 
for it in any other way and we are driven into all 
sorts of absurdities. Here then we rest the argu- 



Among the Gods. 91 

ment for the present, having found in the concep- 
tion of God given us in the Bible the first great 
proof of its inspiration. 



92 Foundation Stones. 



The Inspired Book, 



^^All Scripture is given by inspiratioti of God, and is 
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for 
instruction in righteousness.'' — Second Tim. j : i6. 

^^For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of 
man; but holy 7?ien of God spake as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost.'' — Second Pet. i : 21. 

Last Sabbath evening we dwelt upon the Biblical 
conception of God and from its superiority as com- 
pared with all others, argued that it furnished a 
strong proof of the inspiration of the sacred Scrip- 
tures. It would be interesting to follow, to-night, 
with a lecture on the Biblical conception of man, 
but we can only refer to it and pass on. When we 
recall the fact that no other sacred book assigns to 
man an origin so exalted, or a destiny so sublime; 
that the Bible declares that man was created in the 
divine image, that he was made a little lower than 
the angels, that the son of God died to save him, 
that this was the purpose of infinite Love before 
the foundation of the world; when we remember 
that this book puts upon human life a value that 



i 



The Inspired Book. 93 

is measureless, that the whole drift and tenor of 
its teaching seeks to ennoble and dignify and pro- 
tect man; that it represents all the heavenly intelli- 
gences as regarding him with profound and loving 
interest; when we recall these facts we can but ad- 
mit that so far at least the Bible is consistent. For 
we feel that a book that contains so high a concep- 
tion of God should also entertain a lofty conception 
of man. Thus, at the very outset, our minds are 
disposed in its fjivor. It seems to be our friend. 
At any rate we can hardly feel unkindly toward a 
book that holds such exalted views of our nature, 
and appears to be so deeply concerned about our 
good. But barring all prejudice that may have 
come from this or any other source let us apply to 
the volume the method to which we have thus far 
adhered. The Bible is a fact to be accounted for, 
and if we are honest seekers after the truth, as I 
trust we are, we shall give it the most careful and 
conscientious examination. Now in a general way 
I observe that — 

THIS BOOK CLAIMS TO HAVE BEEN INSPIRED 
OF GOD. 

I need not burden you with quotations in proof 
of this assertion. This claim is either true or false. 



94: Foundation Stones. 

We may look at it, if you please, in the light of 
three suppositions. Suppose first, that it was the 
invention of the good. That would make it neces- 
sary for us to believe that the good made a book 
and were constantly lying while they were writing 
it, for they say again and again: "Thus saith the 
Lord," "Thus saith the Lord," when they were 
only recording their own fiction. But we cannot 
conceive of the good resorting to such downright 
deception as that, and hence, the first supposition 
must be ruled out. Suppose second, that it was the 
fabrication of the had. Then we would be required 
to believe that the bad wrote a book prohibiting all 
evil, forbidding every form of sin, demanding ab- 
solute purity of thought and conduct, commanding 
all duty, and condemning their own souls to all 
eternity. That the bad would do such a thing as 
that is contrary to all reason and experience, and 
so the second supposition must be set aside. There 
is but one other supposition possible, viz.: that 
this Book was inspired of God as it claims to be. 
In support of this claim we allege nothing as yet, 
but proceed somewhat specifically to consider a 
few very striking facts. We find, first, that the 
Bible is — 



The Inspired Book. 95 

UNLIKE ANY OTHER BOOK IN ITS MECHANICAL 
FEATURES. 

It has a beginning and an ending but there is an 
utter absence of the book-maker's handiwork in it. 
"Nobody," says Dr. Parker, " seems to have cared 
much how it was put together. It has not been 
edited, it has been huddled; there is no trace of 
literary plan; no editor or architect could have been 
employed in putting together the various parts. 
Man after man seems to have written just what he 
pleased, and the various parts seem to have been 
thrown together anyhow *•?«•***** 
There is no preface, there is no index, there is no 
table of contents. Here and there — in fact all over 
the face of the book — strange hands have scribbled 
something by which they have meant to indicate 
the contents of the book, but the men themselves 
have written, as it appears to me, w^hen they 
pleased, how they pleased, as much as they pleased, 
and have allowed other people to add little bits 
here and there, and the book has come tosrether in 
the night time, when nobody could tell exactly how 
it was, to tumble into such rough coherence as it 
may claim. There is not the slightest attempt to 
secure beauty or uniformity of outline. Things 



96 Foundation Stones. 

that belong to one another are not put together. 
Some are here, some there, and some other where, 
and a good many are half put; are suggested rather 
than stated." 

But while this is true we find that from first to 
last there is progress, movement, a grand central 
current setting always forward toward a certain 
goal. We find, in fact, that the confusion is very 
like what we see in nature, much more apparent 
than real. The trees of the forest are not planted 
in rows; the flowers of the field are not classified 
and arranged and set in artistic beds; the streams 
do not run in straight channels to the sea; the stars 
are not fixed in the sky in lines and circles. We 
detect nothing of the gardener's cleverness in na- 
ture. Things seem to be thrown together promis- 
cuously. And yet we have seen that there is order 
the most harmonious and wonderful. In this re- 
spect, then, the two books seem to be very much 
alike, and it would not surprise us if they were 
really the work of the same author. Nature builds 
no houses, it constructs no sciences, and yet every 
architect and every scientist goes to nature for his 
raw material. So it is in regard to the Bible. It 
furnishes man with the truth in its native state, and 



The Inspired Book. 97 

leaves him to fashion it into whatever forms or sys- 
tems he will. Now there seems to be wisdom in 
that and goodness too. The mechanical changes, 
the system-builder's handiwork, passes away. New 
architects come on with new plans. Taste is a varia- 
ble and uncertain quantity. Old houses are torn 
down to give place to new. But the material out 
of which men build is the same forever. 

Another thing under this head, viz. ; the size of 
the book. Other sacred books fill a library. They 
spread out into volumes as the Talmud of the He- 
brews, and the Vedas of Brahmanism, and deal 
with every conceivable subject. No one life is long 
enough to become familiar with them, but the Bible 
is a comparatively small book and its essential 
truths may be read and laid up in memory in a very 
short time. This, we must admit, is just what we 
would expect in a book inspired of God for the re- 
liirious instruction of men. But we shall leave this 
for the present, as we expect to refer to it in an- 
other connection. In the second place, the Bible 
is unlike any other book — 

In its style. It is plain-spoken. It drives straight 
ahead and calls things by their right names. It 
uses no gloss, no refinements of speech, whereby 



98 Foundation Stones. 

sin is softened and made almost beautiful. If its 
language sometimes shocks, it is because it de- 
scribes a most shocking and awful thing. It puts 
no bright colors upon that which is inherently and 
utterly black. It never sugar-coats Satan's pills — 
never ; but sets them before us in all their horrid 
ugliness. Other books, made by dainty writers, 
blush and stammer when they come to some 
dreadful sin, or they labor to conceal its hideous- 
ness by throwing around it a handsome garment 
woven out of fastidious and unoffensive words. 
They hide the serpent in a garland of flowers. But 
the Bible knows nothing of such devices . It makes 
no apologies, it suppresses nothing for fear of of- 
fending somebody's taste, but moves right on, 
painting life as it is and giving us some glimpses 
of life as it may become. It is rough, rugged and 
grand as the mountains, and yet modest and sweet 
and gentle as the lilies of the valley. 

In tone it is imperative. It speaks as one having 
authority. It does not come saying: "By your 
leave, or if you please, I would like to make known 
certain truths which I would be greatly gratified to 
have you examine." It commands. It says: "Do 
this and live," or "Do that and die." This is its 



The Inspired Book. 99 

tone throughout, and we can see that no other 
would be consistent with a book claiming to be in- 
spired of God. The book must be like its author 
and when God speaks we expect him to be posi- 
tive, peremptory, and final. Again the Bible is 
unlike any other book in the — 

ENTIRE FRANKNESS OF ITS WRITERS. 

While they are modest enough never to obtrude 
their own personal dignity they are disingenuous 
enough never to conceal their own weaknesses. 
Other men when writing about themselves or 
brethren keep back all facts of a damaging nature 
while they give the worthy things which they did 
as prominent a place as possible. David was an 
adulterer and a murderer, and yet we find him re- 
cording his own crime and saying: ''Against 
thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in 
thy sight." Why did he rush into history with 
such a confession as that ? Why did he blaze bis 
deed of shame to the world ? We read in the Bible 
that Noah got drunk ; that Jacob played a very 
scurvy trick upon his brother Esau, and deceived 
his aged father ; that the great Elijah turned 
coward and acted in a very foolish manner ; that 



100 Foundation Stones. 

Moses lost his patience and Aaron worshipped the 
golden calf ; that Solomon bowed down to idols 
and wrought folly in Isreal ; that Peter, the man 
of rock, cursed and swore and deliberately lied, 
and that Paul and Barnabas quarreled. Now it 
seems very strange that the writers of the Bible 
did not suppress facts like these which reflect so 
seriously upon the characters of its great men. 
Here are twelve men claiming to have been 
charged with a divine commission ; yet when their 
history is written by two of their own number and 
by two devoted friends and admirers, one is de- 
scribed as a thief, a traitor and a suicide, one as a 
skeptic, one, and he their leader and spokesman, 
as weak, impulsive, and on a certain occasion, as 
breaking forth into profanity and falsehood, and all 
of them as deserting the Master in a very cowardly 
manner at the very time when he needed their 
friendship and sympathy most. 

These are the things that impress me with the 
absolute honesty of the book. Forgers do not 
write after this fashion. Men who were inventing 
a Gospel, or trying to make out a case, would have 
carefully avoided such facts as I have just indicated. 
Imagine a company of wise men coming together 



The Inspired Book. 101 

in solemn council to make a Bible containing a re- 
ligion for mankind. They want certain representa- 
tive characters to stand in the foreground to give 
tone and dignity to the volume. Now is it proba- 
ble that they would fix upon such a deceiver as 
Jacob, or such a criminal as David, or such a dis- 
embler as Peter, for this purpose ? Or if they did, 
would they not keep their foul sins out of sight and 
si)eak only of their great and shining qualities ? 
Do we not know that if such men were to write a 
Bible they would fill up its pages, not with the bi- 
ographies of poor sinners, but with those of high 
and mighty saints and patterns of piety and virtue? 
But the writers of this Bible tell the plain truth 
about themselves and their friends and their breth- 
ren, no matter how black and damaging it may 
be. Now here is a striking fact to be accounted 
for. 1 leave it with you, pausing long enough 
simply to say that this entire frankness, this fear- 
loss honesty, looks as though it might have been 
born in Heaven. It does not ring like counter- 
feit coin, and if we rub the prejudice from our eyes 
I wouldn't be surprised if we should see on it the 
image and superscription of God. Again let me 
say that the Bible is unlike any other book in that — 



102 Foundation Stones, 

It is entirely free from any thing like flattery^ or 
from any attempt to smooth over the sins of those 
in high places. We know that as things go among 
men, money and position cover a multitude of evil 
doings. If a young man, belonging to a wealthy 
home, runs away and gets into trouble through his 
own folly, and is brought before the police court 
charged with some very serious crime, it is hushed 
up or his offence is palliated as much as possible. 
But let some poor fellow, without friends or in- 
fluence, or a decent coat to his back, be found 
guilty of a crime not half so heinous, and every de- 
tail of his case is brought out. Nothing is kept 
back. The whole story is told. Not an item is 
suppressed. That, however, is not the way of the 
Bible. No man knows the name of the thief that 
died on the cross, or of the fallen woman who 
bathed the Saviour's feet with her tears, and wiped 
them with the hairs of her head, or of the adulter- 
ess to whom he said: ^' Neither do I condemn thee; 
go, and sin no more." But when David, the king, 
commits a great sin it is all brought out. The 
whole black, damning record is written down. No 
account is made of his position. He is taken from 
his throne and made to sit in sack-cloth and ashes 



The Insptred Book. 103 

and cry from the depths of a broken heart: "Have 
mercy upon me, O God. " So it seems that, nor 
power, nor wealth, nor position, nor anything else, 
can induce this old book to keep back the truth. 
It matters not though that truth may show up the 
faults of its own writers; out it must come, and the 
record stands to testify against them forever. A 
fact so unlike anything we see in other books calls 
for an adequate explanation. Furthermore, the 
Bible is unlike any other book — 

In its omissions. Somewhere in my reading I 
have seen the remark that Swedenborg and Ma- 
homet and Joseph Smith, and the writers of all 
other sacred books, knew too much, and it is true. 
Their very wish to appear inspired carried them into 
all sorts of extravagances. They never knew when 
to stop. In straining after the supernatural they 
became silly, and in their desire to be counted wise 
beyond their fellows they filled their pages with a 
vast amount of nonsense. But no one can say this 
of the writers of the Bible. 

In the weighty and stupendous matters which 
they record, there were a thousand things to 
awaken curiosity and beget speculation but to this 
spirit they never yield. They lay down doctrines 



104 Foundation Stones. 

the most profound and wonderful, surrounded with 
infinite difficulties, but they never suffer themselves 
to turn aside from their main purpose to explain 
them. On they go, never stopping for a moment 
to set down any reflections of their own. Judging 
from ourselves, and from what we know of man- 
kind, we can readily suppose that they were often 
tempted to do this. Why didn't they tell us more 
about heaven ? Why didn't they tell us more 
about hell ? Why didn't they enter more into par- 
ticulars concerning the astonishing events to which 
they refer ? Other sacred writers do, giving us all 
sorts of details, and it is strange that the writers 
of the Bible so uniformly resist this very natural 
tendency. We wonder sometimes that they do not 
say more. At the very point where they excite 
our curiosity they stop. They lead us up to the 
edge of some great unknown region and there they 
leave us. What became of Lazarus after Christ 
raised him from the dead ? What became of the 
ruler's daughter and of the widow's son whom he 
brought back to life ? Not a word do these writers 
of the Bible say about it. How shall we account 
for their silence upon such facts as these ? Why is 
it that just where our curiosity wants to penetrate 
they refuse to throw one ray of light ? 



The Inspired Booh. 105 

Wo have felt a great many times that we would 
like to know more about the infancy and childhood 
and youth of Jesus, but with the exception of a 
single incident, nothing is said in the Gospels about 
those early years. I can imagine how the writers 
thereof must have longed to enlarge upon the won- 
drous story. But I thank God for their silence. 
It is grandly eloquent. It argues with resistless 
force that they were no mere inventors, and if not, 
what then ? I leave you to answer the question 
for yourselves. 

Before leaving this, however, let me call your 
attention to some fictions about the child Jesus, as 
found in the Apocryphal Gospels. I condense 
from Canon Farrar's "Life of Christ." He is rep- 
resented as carrying spilt water in his robe ; as 
moulding sparrows of clay and then making them 
fly by clapping his hands; as turning a variety of 
cloths into the desired color by throwing them 
altogether into a dyer's vat; as turnmg his playmates 
into kids ; as striking dead the boys who ran 
against him, and many other wonderful things. 
How shall we account for the fact that the Gospel 
writers of our Bible kept aloof from all such puer- 
ile and unworthy inventions ? In only one way, 
viz. : that they faithfully told the truth. 



106 Foundation Stones. 

Thus you see the book is no less wonderful in 
what it omits than in what it relates. When a man 
writes a book to-day it is impossible for him to 
keep the thoughts and theories and speculations of 
the times from being more or less woven into its 
subject matter. They are in the air and he ap- 
propriates and assimilates them unconsciously. 
Whether he knows it or not he commits himself to 
some system or school of philosophy, and his teach- 
ings are colored, and his conclusions shaped by his 
surroundings. It is not so with the writers of the 
Bible. They wrote in the midst of political con- 
flict and philosophical inquiry and all sorts of dis- 
cussions, but nothing of these outside matters was 
transferred to their pages. They stick to their 
one purpose everywhere. Nothing can turn them 
aside from it. To the spiritual idea they cling with 
never-swerving loyalty. Let any man account for 
this fact, if he can, apart from the doctrine of in- 
spiration and put his explanation in the question 
box in the vestibule that I may read it to the con- 
gregation. One other fact and I am done for to- 
night. It is this, the Bible is unlike any other 
book — 

In the dbundcmce of its resources. Most of the 



The Inspired Book. 107 

books read now-a-days are laid aside after the first 
perusal, never to be taken up again. That is an 
unusual volume that will repay a second reading, 
and you can count on your fingers those that will 
bear going over half a dozen times. Frequently it 
happens that many of the choice thoughts which 
we marked as we went over the book at first are 
found to be much less profound and important than 
we thought they were when we revert to them 
again. So it often comes to pass that a book suf- 
fers in our estimation by a second reading. The 
more familiar we become with it the less we like it 
and the less we see in it. But the Bible is inex- 
haustible. The more you read it the more it grows 
upon you. The deeper you dig into this mine the 
richer and more abundant the ore. The oftener 
you go back upon its thoughts the more wonderful 
they seem. Every time you turn to it with earn- 
est attention, you discover some new beauty, and 
are surprised at its never-failing adaptations. Lu- 
ther likened it to a tree whose boughs were always 
full of fruit. The more you took oflf the more there 
was left. There are chapters in it — single precepts 
indeed — that might be elaborated into volumes. 
This is the reason why it has been so prolific of 



108 Foundation Stones. 

other books. Its great seed-truths, dropping here 
and there, have sprung up to enrich all the fields of 
literature. It has thoughts for the statesman, it 
has thoughts for the economist, it has thoughts for 
the man of business, it has thoughts for the literary 
man, it has thoughts for the reformer, it has 
thoughts for men living, and thoughts for men dying. 
Let me quote from a man who has a right to speak 
on this subject and whose words are always heard 
with respect in this country. I refer to the illus- 
trious Gladstone. He says: ^ 'AH the wonders of 
the Greek civilization heaped together are less won- 
derful than is the single book of Psalms." 

Two infidels were sailing by a desolate island 
when one of them said, ' 'Suppose you were con- 
demned to live on this island alone and had the 
choice of but one book for your companion, what 
book of books would you choose ?" The other re- 
plied, "I would select Shakespeare, because of the 
variety of his themes." "Well I wouldn't," re- 
joined the questioner, "Although I do not believe 
in the Bible, yet I would choose it as my compan- 
ion, for the Bible is an endless book." 

Endless ! just so. Endless in resources, endless 
in its adaptations to human need, endless in the 



The Inspired Booh. 109 

freshness and variety of its lessons, endless in its 
stores of comfort and wisdom. And yet I find 
that some of its writers were shepherds, some were 
fishermen, one was a herdsman, and one was a tax- 
gatherer. How then did it come to pass that they 
have given us a book of such inherent merit that it 
never wears out ? A book which never grows old 
and which is most loved and honored in communi- 
ties where there is most intelligence ? To find a 
satisfactory answer to these questions I would not 
be surprised if we should be compelled to turn to 
the text and say: ''Holy men of God spake as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost." At any rate 
here we stop for to-night, and. Lord willing, we 
shall continue our argument from this point next 
Sabbath evening. 



110 Foundation Stones. 



The Inspired Book. 

(Continued.) 



^^Thy Testimonies are wonderful'' — Psalms iig: i2g. 

It is conceded by all that we have in the Bible a 
wonderful book. Whatever we may think of its 
origin we are compelled to admit that it is a very 
remarkable volume. To cast aside a production so 
extraordinary without giving it a careful examina- 
tion would be an act unworthy of serious-minded 
men and women, and I cannot believe that we are 
in a mood to do anything of that kind. I feel that 
we want to push the investigation as far and as 
thoroughly as we can. We are dealing with facts 
and seeking to account for them upon principles of 
reason and common sense. No appeal is made to 
prejudice or educational bias, but we say: *'Here 
are certain facts; explain them; give us the inter- 
pretation thereof." That is the method men adopt 
in searching for truth elsewhere, and in examinmg 



r 



The Inspired Book — Continued. Ill 

the foundation stones of Christianity we claim no 
rights, no privileges, no immunities, which are not 
claimed in other directions. Continuing the dis- 
cussion, then, from the point where we left it last 
Sabbath evening, let me ask, in the first place, how 
we shall account for — 

1. The correctness of the BiUe as to matters not 
immediately connected with its inain purpose. The 
main purpose of the book is spiritual ; to reveal 
God, the sinfulness of the human family, and to 
make known the way of salvation therefrom. This 
is the one end it has in view. But as it proceeds 
to unfold this great purpose from age to age it has 
to do with a great variety of incidental matters. 
It does not profess to be a scientific book and yet 
it abounds in allusions and references of a scientific 
sort, not one of which, thus far, has ever been 
proven incorrect. Every intelligent person knows 
how fiercely the conflict has raged over the first 
chapter of Genesis. But to-day the order of crea- 
tion, or of evolution, as taught by the most ad- 
vanced science, is precisely that of the Mosaic rec- 
ord. Go to geology, read the testimony of the 
rocks; or turn to botany and zoology, investigate 
the story of life, both vegetable and animal; or take 



112 Foundation Stones. 

up the subject of light, and you find yourself fol- 
lowing step by step the order laid down in Gene- 
sis. According to the Biblical narrative, there was 
light before the creation of the sun, and infidels 
have laughed at this scientific blunder, and called 
it one of the "Mistakes of Moses." But advanc- 
ing knowledge has shown that there are other 
sources of light apart from the sun. Heat pro- 
duces light, chemical combination produces light, 
electricity throws out light, the rocks in crystalli- 
zation emit light, so that no one to-day who is even 
moderately posted as to the formation of the earth, 
as explained hy science^ questions the accuracy of 
the Mosaic statement. But Moses was not a scien- 
tist in any sense nor in any direction. How then 
did it come to pass that he gave to the world a rec- 
ord which, though abounding in scientific matter, 
the ablest scholarship, the keenest criticism, the 
most painstaking investigation, have proved to be 
correct ? 

Is it not remarkable that many of the great truths 
of science, brought to light within comparatively 
recent times, were known to the writers of the 
Bible thousands of years ago ? It was considered 
a great step forward when astronomy discovered 



The Inspired Book — Contmued. 113 

that our earth, instead of being stationary, is sweep- 
ing through the heavens in a majestic orbit. But 
Isaiah, the prophet, knew it and spoke of "the circle 
of the earth." Solomon seems to have understood 
the laws of the trade winds thirty centuries before 
Maury discovered the rotations and revolutions 
thereof, and he gives us this description: "The 
wind goeth toward the south and turneth about to 
the north, and the wind returneth according to his 
circuits." Job talked with his three friends about 
the inclination of the earth's axis and its equilib- 
rium in space on this wise: "He stretcheth out the 
north over the empty place and hangeth the earth 
upon nothing." No scientist of modern times has 
more briefly and clearly propounded the laws of 
condensation and evaporation than did the ancient 
Elihu in the following words: "For He maketh 
small the drops of water; they pour down rain ac- 
cording to the vapor thereof; which the clouds do 
drop and distil upon man abundantly." 

So we find that the Biblical description of the 
great deluge, so often laughed at by atheists and 
scoff'ers, is corroborated by science as well as by 
the traditions of the nations of antiquity. The Bi- 
ble tells us that at the command of Joshua "the 



114 Foundation Stones. 

sun stood still in the midst of heaven and hasted 
not to go down the whole day." How the infidels 
have laughed over that and made merry. ' ' And 
this is the book," they say, ''which we are expected 
to believe." But just in this connection we are 
glad to be able to refer them to Ovid, the Latin 
poet, to whom we are indebted for the story of 
Phaeton's chariot. He tells us that a day was 
once lost and that the earth was in great danger 
from the intense heat of an unusual sun. True, he 
has surrounded the incident with all the coloring of 
a vivid imagination. "But," says Dr. Nelson, 
"our notice is somewhat attracted when we find him 
mention Phaeton, who was a Canaanitish prince, 
and learn that the fable originated with the Phoeni- 
cians, the same people whom Joshua fought. " It 
is certainly strange that there should have been a 
common tradition among early nations that a day 
was lost about the time when the volume of truth 
informs us that "the sun hasted not to go down for 
the space of a whole day." 

In matters of history, too, the Bible has been 
found to be perfectly reliable. Many of its state- 
ments, long held in doubt, have been proven true 
by scientific exploration and investigation. But its 



The Inspired Book — Continued, 115 

writers were neither historians, in the strict sense 
of that word, nor men of science. How then did 
it happen that they made no mistake when writing 
of incidental and collateral things, about w^hich we 
could hardly expect them to be well informed? An- 
other fact to be accounted for is — 

^. The subject matter of the Book. Verily in 
this respect it is most wonderful. Man fallen, man 
redeemed, not by gold, nor silver, nor any of the 
corruptible things of earth, but by the blood of the 
Son of God! That God should have loved man with 
an everlasting love, and that Christ should have 
died, the just for the unjust; that the Divine should 
assume the nature of man, and veil his glory in a 
robe of flesh; that he should be born in a manger, 
reared in the midst of poverty, trained to toil in a 
carpenter's shop; that friendless almost, and home- 
less, he should accomplish his mission; that He who 
made all the waving harvests, put the gold away in 
the mine, and owned the cattle on a thousand hills, 
and poured the seas from his chalice as easily as 
the child pours water from its little cup, — should 
hunger and thirst, and suffer fatigue, and finally 
die on the cross; that the writers of the Bible could 
have invented such a story as this is simply impos- 



116 Foundation Stones. 



sible. To believe that they could, demands too 
great a stretch of credulity. 

There are some who claim that it is belittling a 
great subject to take God out of eternity and make 
Him walk the rough hills of time with blistered and 
weary feet; to take him from the throne of heaven 
and put Him, a helpless babe, upon his mother's 
knee; to transform the Eternal into a man, weak 
enough to shed tears ! But in this representation 
I rejoice, for its very strangeness, the utter im- 
probability that it ever would have occurred to the 
writers if left to themselves, is a strong argument 
in favor of its truth. 

In what sense, however, does this representation 
belittle God ? When fire comes down from its 
home in the sun, as another has suggested, and, 
going into the kitchen, cooks our food ; when it 
goes up stairs and keeps the little children warm 
during the cold, wintry nights; when it consents 
to do the most menial service for the comfort of 
man, now burning in the night lamp, and now 
warming the sick chamber; when it cheers the poor 
man's hearth as gladly as that of the rich, and hesi- 
tates not to warm the meanest hovel — does all this 
condescension on the part of fire bring the sun into 



The Inspired Book — Continued. 117 

contempt, or in any way detract from its dignity ? 
Nay, but it glorifies it. So this representation of 
God coming down to earth, subjecting himself to 
human conditions, becoming a servant, ministering 
to the comfort of the poor and the fallen and the 
sinful, instead of belittling, clothes him with gran- 
deur and beauty and love. And this leads me to 
say a word in the next place about — 

S. The boldness of the Book. It is not afraid to 
say that the Son of God died; that the author and 
sustainer of life gave up the ghost. Glaring as the 
contradiction may seem it does not fear to affirm 
that God is omnipotent and yet that he stands out- 
side of the door of the human heart knocking and 
waiting to be admitted. Think of it. An Omnipo- 
tent God barred out by the puny hand of one of his 
own creatures. How shall we account for the au- 
dacity of such a statement as that ? Fabricators, it 
seems to me, would have been more guarded. 
They would have said: "We must be consistent. 
Our story must hang together. It will never do 
to say that the mightiest of all beings can be re- 
sisted and defied by man." But the writers of the 
Bible declare this very thing. They boldly set 
limits to the Almighty. They make Him wait the 



118 Foundation Ston£s. 

pleasure of the human will. And not only so, but 
in one breath they tell us that the heaven of heav- 
ens cannot contam him, and in the next, that he 
will enter the penitent breast and make his home in 
the contrite soul. We are told that he does what 
he will among the armies of heaven, and yet when 
he comes as a husbandman to visit his own field 
he is seized and killed. Now he is the Lord God 
Omnipotent, and now tears flow down his cheeks. 
Now he is said to be terrible in majesty, and now 
asleep on the hinder part of a fishing boat. Thus 
we have these opposite ideas boldly placed right 
alongside of each other, and no effort whatever is 
made to harmonize them. Inventors would cer- 
tainly have been more careful. Besides, the con- 
ception of such self-contradictory ideas never could 
have been imagined. But there stands the fact, 
and, as seekers after the truth, we are not at liberty 
to dismiss it without looking for a reasonable expla- 
nation. 

4. Its Radicalness. It tells us how sin entered 
the world, and how to get rid of it. Its remedy is 
unique and without a parallel. It refuses to work 
upon the outside, or content itself by dealing with 
symptoms. Here are the countless crimes and 



The Inspired Book — Continued. 119 

evils with which society is afflicted: theft, violence, 
arson, forgery, murder, not to mention the ten 
thousand lesser sins in the calendar. And what 
does society propose as an antidote — what does the 
wisdom of the great and learned recommend as a 
cure for these evils ? Legislation, better legisla- 
tion. They tell us to invoke the aid of law and 
bring power to bear upon the workers of mischief. 
Well, we do it and power is a failure. It may re- 
press, but it cannot destroy. Like an arrested 
stream the evil thus checked gathers such force 
that after awhile it breaks over every barrier and 
goes sweeping on with greater destruction than 
ever. This is the explanation of revolution after 
revolution in history of the world. Others advise 
us to try education., and we build schools and we 
educate. We improve our methods of instruction 
and go on refining until our schools are marvels of 
human skill and cleverness. But do they blot out 
crime ? Do they diminish the evils of society ? 
Let our forgers and bank robbers and highly edu- 
cated thieves who are fleeing to Canada for refuge 
every week in the year be the answer. France be- 
lieves that education is the one panacea for all hu- 
man ills, and, acting upon that belief, she has been 



120 Foundation Stones, 

gradually losing prestige and power. No, educa- 
tion is not enough. Unless it is coupled with some- 
thing else it only makes men more proficient in 
wrong doing. 

But the Bible is radical. It goes at once to the 
very core of the diflSculty. When it sees a man 
sick of the palsy, paralyzed, helpless, or leprous, or 
blind, or ailing in any way whatever, it says: ''This 
is the work of sin. This comes from a deadly taint 
in the moral nature, from poison in the very blood 
of the soul." And in order to destroy the effect it 
strikes at the cause. Thus it deals with every form 
and manifestation of evil. It does not reform, it 
regenerates. It proposes to make life clean by 
purifying the fountain. It does not throw about a 
man the restraints of power and compel him to a 
certain course of conduct, but it begins by chang- 
ing his heart and begetting within him a prevailing 
preference for the right and good. Now we must 
admit that this is just what we would expect in a 
book claiming to have been inspired by God. A 
book coming from such a source must be thorough. 
It is certainly incumbent upon us to find some ra- 
tional explanation of the extremely radical charac- 
ter of this volume. How did its writers come to 



The Inspired Book — Continued. 121 

lay hold of a philosophy so profound and a remedy 
so complete ? Another very remarkable fact which 
must not escape our notice is — 

5. The unity of the Bible. It is not every man 
that can write a book that will be consistent in all 
its parts. We are not surprised when we run upon 
incoherencics here and there. And if a man is the 
author of several volumes, nothing is more com- 
mon than to find large discrepancies between his 
earliest and latest publications. But suppose forty 
men belonging to various stations in life, from fish- 
erman to king, differing widely in education and in 
natural gifts, and covering a period of 1,500 years, 
should write a book of sixty -six parts ; suppose 
some were to write in one language, and some in 
another, and from places as remote from one an- 
other as their separation in time, from the prison, 
from the land of exile, from the school, from the 
hillsides, from the throne ; suppose they were to 
write in every style known to literature, history, 
biography, poetry, prophecy, proverbs, letters, 
speeches and parables ; suppose them to be as much 
subject to prejudice and local influence as men are 
in general. Now would it not be a marvelous 
thing if these forty men should produce a book con- 



122 Foundation Stones. 

sistent and harmonious throughout ? But precisely 
in this way, and by this number of authors, was 
the Bible produced. Men of every grade and con- 
dition contributed to this wonderful volume. Some 
of it was penned in shepherds' tents, some in royal 
courts, some in the schools of the prophets, some 
within prison walls. You will find in it, too, every 
variety of writing, from the loftiest poetry to the 
plainest and most unpretentious dialogue. But 
with all its variety of authorship and style it is one 
book, one in theme, one in its teachings, one in pur- 
pose. While it consists of two grand divisions, 
called the Old and New Testaments, it is as much 
one as foundation and superstructure, as root and 
blossom, as the two halves of the same circle. 

Now, I affirm that this unity of a book prepared 
as I have indicated, is nothing short of a miracle. 
If it had been the outgrowth of any single age from 
which it caught its spirit, or if it had come from 
any one class of authors, we might perhaps account 
for its unity upon merely natural principles; but 
when we remember that it was the product of va- 
rious ages, and of men of widely different gifts and 
classes, we are compelled to look elsewhere for an 
explanation. And just here I cannot forbear to 



The Inspired Booh — Continued. 123 

quote the words of Dry den on this very point: 

"Whence but from heaven could men unskilled in arts, 
In several ages born, in several jmrts, 
Weave such agreeing truths ? Or how or why 
Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie ? 
Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice, 
Starving their gains, and martyrdom their price." 

If there should come forty different men from 
different lands, strangers to one another, each 
bringing with him a piece of work made by his own 
skill, and if when the forty pieces were put together 
they formed one beautiful and symmetrical struc- 
ture what would we say ? How would we account 
for it? In only oneway, viz.: that the whole struc- 
ture had been planned by one master mind, and 
that each workman had been assigned his particu- 
lar part and given a pattern by which to shape it. 
So when we see Moses and John, David and Paul, 
Daniel and Peter, Amos and Matthew, herdsmen, 
shepherds, fishermen, kings, each bringing a block 
or more of his own fashioning, and coipbining them 
so as to make this one grand temple of truth, we 
say it was because they were divinely controlled ; 
that they worked according to a divine plan, and 
followed the leadings of one supreme mind. But 
the illustration is hardly correct; for the Biblical 



124 Foundation Stones. 

writers did not bind up their productions in one 
volume but left them to be collected and compiled 
by other hands. No compilation, however, can 
produce unity unless there is one plan running 
through all the parts. 

This unity of the Bible appears on every page, 
if the reader will open his eyes and look. It is a 
house of many mansions, but there is one key that 
will fit every lock in it, and open every apartment. 
That key is the atoning Son of God. The Scrip- 
tures, he said, "testify of me." To the disheart- 
ened disciples on the way to Emmaus he appeared, 
and "beginning at Moses, he expounded to them in 
all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." 
Are there shadows ? Are there types and symbols 
and sacrifices and blood-sprinkled altars ? Are there 
promises and prophecies ? They all point to Christ. 

In Him they have their meaning and fulfillment. 
He is the all-uniting centre. It is said that "if you 
go into a British navy yard, or on board a British 
vessel, and pick up a piece of rope, you will find 
that there is one little red thread which runs 
through the whole of it — through every foot of cord- 
age which belongs to the British government — so, 
if a piece of rope is stolen, it may be cut into inch 



The Insjnred Booh — Continued. 125 



pieces, but every piece has the mark which tells 
where it belongs." In like manner there runs 
through this Bible the scarlet thread of redemption 
woven into it by the fingers of infinite love. Sepa- 
rate it as you will and you find one controlling 
thought around which all others revolve. That 
thought is Christ, now called "the seed of the 
woman," now "the seed of Abraham," now "the 
seed of David," now "the Branch," now "the 
Plant of Renown," but ])y w^hatcver name he may 
be called he is always there as the one great unify- 
ing centre. 

I know that some people find this book disjointed 
and fragmentary, but it is because they do not read 
it in order from beginning to end as they read any 
other book. Take the finest volume in your library 
and pick out a chapter here, another there, and see 
what you can make of it. When you read some 
work of fiction you do not glance at an occasional 
passage and then complain that 3'ou cannot get the 
run of it. You begin at the beginning, you find 
out who the hero is and you follow him on through 
all the intricacies of the plot, and you never stop 
until the story culminates in his triumph, and all 
the characters fall into their appropriate places. 



126 Foundation Stones. 

Do that with the Bible. Before you have read 
three chapters you will come to the Hero of the im- 
mortal story. Follow Him on and by and by you 
come to a manger over which the angels sing ; a 
little farther and you hear Him speak words such 
as never fell from mortal tongue, and see Him 
pouring out his life in works of love ; a little far- 
ther and you see a cross upon a rugged hill, and 
there the Hero dies praying for those who drive 
the nails; a few chapters more, and you behold Him 
going up the skies in a chariot of cloud, and then, 
a little farther, as the climax of it all, you see Him 
crowned and enthroned as King, and hear the count- 
less hosts whom He has redeemed, saying: ^ ^Bless- 
ing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto Him 
that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb 
forever ! " Thus you find it pervaded by one su- 
preme idea — one steady, undeviating purpose; and 
my conviction is that this unity alone stamps upon 
it the signature of the skies. At any rate it de- 
volves upon those who demur to account for the 
fact in some more reasonable way. 



The Inspired Book — Continued. 127 



The Inspired Book. 

(Continued.) 



^^ Thy word is true from the beginning ; and everyone 
of thy righteous judgments endureth forever'' — Psalms 
iig:i6o. 

Let me ask you to-night to consider some addi- 
tional facts connected with the Bible. And first I 
desire to call your attention to some of 

1. Its remarkable prophecies and their fulfill- 
ment. That it abounds in predictions is a fact well 
known to all who read it, and if it can be shown 
that these have proved true, it will be a strong 
point in favor of the book. The world is not with- 
out its prophets to-day. They boldly essay to fore- 
cast the future and tell us about terrible storms and 
earthquakes, and tidal waves, and divers calamities 
which are to befall at such and such a date and 
place, but when the time comes these direful prog- 
nostications fail to materialize, much to the relief 
of everybody, but those who make them. Napo- 



128 Foundation Stones. 

leon the First predicted that in fifty years all Eu- 
rope would be either Cossack or Republican, but 
he was a better soldier than seer. Besides, to utter 
a prophecy with an either in it is, to say the least, 
a little ambiguous. But you will find no such 
double-barreled prophecies as that in the Bible. 
Among prophets of later times it is conceded that 
the mysterious Mother Shipton has hit the mark 
with a surprising degree of accuracy, but her pre- 
diction that 

" The world to an end would come 
In eighteen hundred and eighty-one," 

having turned out false, we have lost faith in her, 
for the world rolls on as of old. Clever guesswork, 
ambiguous foretelling is one thing; prophecy is 
quite another. To write the history of the time to 
come, if I may so speak, with such accuracy that 
it will stand the test and unfolding of the future, 
even to the smallest details, is certainly a wonder- 
ful thing, and is not to be classed with the random 
predictions to which I have referred. That the 
prophecies of the Bible have stood this test I shall 
now proceed to show. Let us begin with 

THE JEWS. 

Fifteen hundred years before Christ, Moses pre- 



The Inspired Book — Continued. 129 

dieted that if the Jews were unfaithful to God they 
would "become an astonishment, a proverb, and a 
by- word among all nations" (Deut. 38:37), all of 
which has literally come to pass. In the book of 
Numbers it is said of Israel: "Lo, the people shall 
dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the 
nations" (23rd chapter). Yet in apparent contra- 
diction to this prophecy, it is declared in Amos 
(chap. 14): "For lo, I will command, and I will 
sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as 
corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the last grain 
fall upon the ground.'' Now, is it not a remarka- 
ble thing that the history of the Jewish race so com- 
pletely answers both of these predictions incongru- 
ous as they may seem? The Jews do ' 'dwell alone. " 
In every land and in every age they preserve their 
identity. Other races run together and become 
fused into one, but the Jew never loses his individ- 
uality. His religion, his features, his characteris- 
tics, remain the same beneath every sky, and 
through all time. Nor are the Jews "reckoned 
among the nations." They are a people without a 
country and without a ruler. They are everywhere, 
and yet they hail no flag as theirs. The prophe- 
cies which I have quoted concerning them have been 



130 Foundation Stones. 

fulfilled to the very letter. Everybody knows that 
they have become *'an astonishment, a proverb, 
and a by-word," that they " dwell alone," and that 
they have been scattered and '^sifted among all na- 
tions." Here is a fact to be accounted for. It 
stands by itself in the history of the world, and 
while it stands it will put the stamp of truth upon 
this old book. Look next at a few of the prophe- 
cies concerning 

THE CHRIST. 

We find them relating to the place and manner 
of his birth, to his parentage, to his treatment by 
the people, to his work, to his death, to his resur- 
rection. So numerous and pointed are they, and 
so exactly do they tally with the events of his his- 
tory as to make it impossible for us to believe that 
they could have had their origin in any mere hu- 
man foresight. Thus Isaiah foretold his birth: 
''Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bare a son, 
and shall call his name Immanuel" (chap. 7). And 
Micah predicted the place as follows : *'And thou 
Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least 
among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall 
come a governor that shall rule my people 
Israel" (Matt. 2:6). Isaiah described the treat- 



The Inspired Book — Continued. 131 

merit he should receive in these words: "He is de- 
spised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief; and we hid, as it were, our 
faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed 
him not" (Isa. 53:3). Every word of this came 
true. He xoas born of a virgin, he was born in 
Bethlehem, he was treated with scorn and contempt. 
Forecasting the sufferings of the Messiah, Isaiah 
wrote: "He is brought as a lamb to the slaugh- 
ter." "He was wounded for our transgressions, he 
was bruised for our iniquities" (chap. 53) ; and in 
the 22nd Psalm it is written: "They pierced my 
hands and feet. " SaysZechariah: "They weighed 
for my price thirty pieces of silver ; " and accord- 
ing to the Gospel record that is just what the priests 
paid Judas for playing the traitor. David pre- 
dicts: "They shall laugh him to scorn, and shake 
their heads, saying, he trusted in the Lord that He 
would deliver him ; let Him deliver him seeing he 
delighted in Him" (Psalms 22) ; and Matthew, the 
historian, writes thus: "They that passed by re- 
viled him, wagging their heads and saying, he 
trusted in God, let Him deliver him " (chap 27). 
But I can only call attention to a few of these won- 
derful prophecies concerning Christ. The Bible is 



132 Foundation Stones. 

full of them and such is the force of the evidence 
they furnish as to the truth of the book that infidels 
have affirmed that they were written after the 
events, to which they point, occurred. But this 
needs no refutation and is not accepted by respect- 
able scholarship anywhere. The original Septau- 
gint, or Greek version of the Old Testament was 
undertaken three hundred years before Christ, and 
that version contained these predictions relating to 
the Messiah. 

Passing from this let me ask your attention to one 
or two prophecies touching 

BABYLON, NINEVEH, TYEE AND JERUSALEM. 

Anybody, be it observed, may prophecy in a 
general way. It would be perfectly safe to pre- 
dict that London, and New York, and Chicago will 
pass away. To foretell the destruction of perish- 
able things does n(^t require very much inspiration. 
But to enter into details and specifications would 
be dangerous business for an impostor. For ex- 
ample, it is easy enough to foretell that you will 
die, but to point out the manner and circumstances 
of your death, whether it will be caused by accident 
or by this or that disease, is quite another matter. 
False prophets must steer clear ofparticularsif they 



The Inspired Book — Continued. 133 

want to keep up their reputation. We find, how- 
ever, that the prophets of the Bible are not afraid 
to go into all the niinuticB of a case. Thus Isaiah 
foretells the doom of Bahylow. "It shall never be 
inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from genera- 
tion to generation ; neither shall the Arabian pitch 
his tent there; neither shall shepherds make their 
fold there; but wild beasts of the desert shall lie 
there; and their houses shall be full of doleful crea- 
tures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall 
dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall 
cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their 
pleasant palaces " (Isa. 13:20-22). Every traveler 
bears testimony to the literal truth of this remarka- 
ble prediction. It is not strange that Babylon 
should have been destroyed as the tides of civiliza- 
tion swept away from it toward the west, but that it 
should never be inhabited from generation to gen- 
eration, that the wandering Arab should hold aloof 
from it, that it should become the home of the bit- 
tern — a species of water fowl — were details which 
no human sagacity could have foreseen. Now, no- 
tice what those who have been on the spot say. 
Concerning this ancient city Buckingham writes as 
follows: "There are many dens of wild beasts in 



134 Foundation Stones. 

various parts. In most of the cavities are numbers 
of bats and owls." Says Porter: "It is the refuge 
of jackals and other savage animals." Says Mig- 
non: "Morasses and ponds tracked the ground in 
various places. For a long time after the subsid- 
ing of the Euphrates a great part of this place is 
little better than a swamp." 

As to Nineveh, in the prophecy of Nahum, it was 
foretold that it should be destroyed by the two 
agencies of flood and fire, and so it came to pass. 
The historian tells us that the great river, having 
swollen to an unusual degree, swept away a large 
portion of its walls. Taking advantage of the 
breach thus made, the besiegers rushed in and set 
the city on fire. Out of the ruins explorers dug char- 
coal, burnt beams and slabs of half-calcined alabas- 
ter which were deposited in the British museum 
and bear eloquent testimony to the truth of the pre- 
diction. So, in regard to Tyre, the fulfillment of 
prophecy has been no less wonderful. It was a 
commercial city of great wealth and magnificence. 
Her ships floated over the seas and conveyed the 
riches of the earth into her ports. But, said the 
prophecy: "I will also scrape her dust from her, 
and make her like the top of a rock" (Eze. 26:4). 



The Inspired Book — Continued. 135 

In exact agreement herewith we read in history 
that Alexander the Great, in order to reach new 
Tyre, which had been re-built on an island, half a 
mile from the shore, gathered up the ruins of the 
old city, scraping the very dust from her^ and with 
this material constructed a causeway over which he 
led his troops and engines of war. 

Said the prophet, also, concerning Tyre: "Thou 
shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be 
built no more" (Eze. 26:1J:). In corroboration ot 
the truth of this detail Yolney, the infidel, writes : 
"The whole village of Tyre contain only fifty or 
sixty poor families, who live obscurely on the pro- 
duce of their little ground and a trifling fishery ; and 
Bruce describes Tyre as a "rock whereon fishers 
dry their nets. " 

Passing now to glance at a few of the predictions 
relating to Jerusalem we find it was foretold that 
the holy city should "be trodden down of the Gen- 
tiles" (Luke 21) ; and every reader knows how 
Saracens, Turks, and crusading hosts, pouring in 
from Europe, fulfilled that prophecy. Of Zion it 
was foretold that it should be "plowed as a field * 
and the mountain of the house become like the 
high places of the forest " (Jer. 26:18). To this 



136 Foundation Stones. 

day the name of the soldier, Terentius Rufus, who 
plowed the foundations of the temple, is preserved, 
and the Jews have never ceased to curse his mem- 
ory. Jesus predicted concerning Jerusalem: "Be- 
hold, your house is left unto you desolate " (Matt. 
23:38). But Julian, the apostate, emperor of Rome, 
determined to falsify this prophecy, and sent Aly- 
pius, his friend, with an army and treasure to re- 
build the city. The Jews joined him in the pro- 
ject with enthusiasm and "their women took part 
in the work, and in the laps of their garments car- 
ried off the earth which covered the ruins of the 
temple. But a sudden whirlwind and earthquake 
shattered the stones of the former foundation ; the 
workmen fled for refuge to one of the neighboring 
churches, the doors of which were closed against 
them by an invisible hand, and a fire, issuing from 
the Temple-mount, raged the whole day and con- 
sumed their tools. Numbers perished in the flames. " 
So wrote the ecclesiastical historians of the early 
church. If it should be said that their narrative is 
partial, one-sided, and colored by prejudice, we are 
glad to be able to quote from the other side. The 
pagan historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, "the 
friend and companion in arms" of Julian, writes as 



The Insj)ired Book — Continued. 137 

follows: "Horrible balls of fire, breaking out from 
the foundations with repeated attacks, rendered the 
place inaccessible to the scorched workmen, and 
the element driving them to a distance from time 
to time, the enterprise was dropped. " Sec, then, 
how marvelously the prophetic sayings of this old 
book have been fulfilled. But I am not done yet. 
Indeed there is material enough of this kind for 
half a dozen lectures. I fear, however, I am weary- 
ing you with these details, and if you will bear 
with me while I call attention to some predictions 
in regard to Egypt, I shall pass to something else. 

Thus spoke the ancient prophet: "It shall be 
the basest of kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself 
any more above the nations. And I will make the 
rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the 
wicked; and I will make the land waste, and all 
that is therein by the hand of strangers; I, the Lord, 
have spoken it. I will also destroy their idols, and 
I wnll cause their images to cease out of Noph, and 
there shall be no more a prince of the land of 
Egypt" (Eze. 28:30). 

Notice there are three specific predictions here: 
First, that it should be the ^^hasest of the king- 
doms." That was very unlikely, looking at it from 



138 Foundation Stones. 

a human point of view, for such was the fertility 
of that land that it was justly called the granary of 
the world. Besides, its natural defences, the Red 
Sea on one side, the Mediterranean on another, the 
great Sahara on a third, furnished unusual protec- 
tion from invading armies. But there stands Egypt 
to-day, poor and starved and lean and base. From 
the day of the ancient Babylonians to the present, 
it has been held down and subjugated by stran- 
gers. The infidel Volney says of it: ''A universal 
air of misery manifest in all the traveler meets 
points out to him the rapacity of oppression, and 
the distrust attendant upon slavery." 

The second specific prediction relates to the de- 
struction of idols and image worship. From what 
we know of Egypt, a greater improbability could 
hardly be conceived than that idols should cease 
out of the land; for her people were in the habit of 
bowing down to almost everything from the sun to 
the, beetle. 

Besides, is not baseness the invariable compan- 
ion of idolatry everywhere else ? How, then, did 
it come to pass that idols and images have long 
since been destroyed in Egypt, as we know they 
have, by the Mohammedan^ who disdains to kneel 



The Inspired Booh — Continued. 139 



before wood or stone, living animals or painted 
statues ? It does look as though it was because the 
mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. 

The third specification in the prophecy is that 
there should ' ' no more l)e a prince of the land of 
Egypt." A most unlikely thing, if wc may judge 
from all historic analogy, but so it turned out. 
''Deprived twenty-three centuries ago," says Vol- 
ney, "of her natural proprietors, she has seen her 
fertile fields successively a prey to the Persians, 
Macedonians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Georgians, 
and at length the race of Tartars, distinguished by 
the name of Ottoman Turks." No native lord gov- 
erns there, no prince of the land of Egypt sits upon 
an Egyptian throne. Her rulers are, and for ages 
have been, imported. So far as the argument from 
prophecy is concerned we stop here. I realize that 
I have scarcely entered into the subject at all, but, 
for our purpose, the facts which I have given you 
are suflicient. They carry with them a force which 
no unprejudiced mind can resist. There is a cu- 
mulative power about them which cannot be with- 
stood except by those who have made up their 
minds beforehand not to be convinced. We have 
seen that the Jews were to "dwell alone," yet be 



140 Foundation Stones, 

scattered abroad; abhorred, persecuted, and yet 
preserved; we have seen how the manifold predic- 
tions concerning the Christ were literally fulfilled; 
we have seen how Babylon should become the 
dwelling place of wild beasts, and bats, and owls; 
how Nineveh, "that great city," was to be de- 
stroyed by flood and fire; how Tyre was to be 
scraped bare like the top of a rock, and become a 
place for the spreading of nets; how Jerusalem 
should bo plowed as a field; how Egypt should be 
the basest of the kingdoms and no more be ruled 
by native princes. All these prophecies we have 
seen fulfilled, even to the smallest particulars, and 
now I say: "Account for them. Give us a rea- 
sonable explanation of these astonishing facts." 
When we find history unfolding in exact accord 
with the records of ancient prophecies as we have 
them in this book, blazing conspicuously from hun- 
dreds of pages, and appealing to every eye that 
will take the pains to read them, we ask "how did 
those old writers come to have this prophetic vis- 
ion ?" and we find the answer in inspiration. To 
that conclusion we are driven, not by the wish of 
the heart, not by religious prcvjudice, not by mo- 
tives growing out of our calling, but by the inevi- 



The InSjpir.ed Book — Continued. 141 

table logic of the facts. Any man who will take 
these prophecies and examine them carefully and 
compare the events to which they point with the 
sober record of history will be compelled to admit 
that this book is true. But if he hear not Moses 
and the prophets, neither would he be persuaded 
though one rose from the dead. 

I have spent so much time on this part of my 
subject that I shall detain you to say only a word 
or two as to 

2. The Adaptation of the Book. Does it not 
seem strange that men living in a remote age, some 
of them in the very morning of the world's history, 
brought up in the midst of oriental manners, and 
trained to oriental methods of thought and expres- 
sion, should, nevertheless, write a book whose 
teachings are thoroughly adapted to every race and 
clime and age ? Carry this Bible where you will, 
to the heart of China, to the centre of Africa, to the 
South Sealslanders, or to the Esquimau in his house 
of snow, audit fits right into human conditions and 
conveys the same good news to mankind every- 
where. It speaks the universal language and ad- 
dresses the universal heart. It is suited to the ne- 
gro who lives beneath burning suns no less than to 



142 Foundation Stones. 

the Laplander who wraps himself in furs three- 
fourths of the year. It meets the spiritual wants 
of the king on his throne, as well as those of the 
poor man in his cabin. Other sacred books are 
local and stay among the people with whom they 
originated, but the Bible finds its way to every 
corner of the earth and is everywhere found to be 
adapted to sinning, struggling, sorrowing human- 
ity. Translate Shakespeare into Chinese or Choc- 
taw and its beauty and much of its strength are gone. 
But such is the amazing adaptation of this book that 
no number of translations from language to language 
can divest it of its power. There is a spirit in it 
that glorifies the meanest dialect found among men. 
As water is just as sweet when leaping from the 
bosom of the unsightly rock as when bursting from 
fountains of silver and gold, so the truths of this 
book are no less precious when clothed in the most 
barbarious speech than when attired in our own 
racy and world-famous English. It is suited to 
the individual, suited to the family, suited to the 
nation, suited to the race. It accommodates itself 
to the philosopher as well as to the peasant, and 
fits the nineteenth century as well as the first. 
These are facts, and while. they can be affirmed of 



The Inspired Book — Continxied. 143 

the book, the inference we have a right to draw 
from them can be embodied in no better words than 
those of the text: "Thy word is true from the be- 
ginning; every one of thy righteous judgments 
endureth forever." 



144 Foundation Stones. 



An Indestructible Book. 



** The grass wither eth, the flower fadeih ; but the word 
of our God shall stand forever."" — Isa. 40 : 8. 

No book has ever been so fiercely assailed as the 
Bible. From the days of Celsus and Porphyry 
down to the greatest product of American infidelity 
the hosts of unbelief have made it the centre of at- 
tack. Some of the keenest intellects of the ages 
have hurled at it the powerful weapons of their 
satire; some have gone through it, cutting and 
slashing with the knife of relentless criticism; some 
have tried to laugh it out of existence; some have 
tried to argue it down, but still it lives and grows 
and gathers power with every passing year, while 
those who labored so hard to destroy it have passed 
away into the silence of oblivion. Four or five 
generations ago Voltaire filled Europe with his ir- 
reverent wit, and his travesties of the Bible were 
read in court, and palace, and cabin. Indeed, they 



An Indestructible Booh. 145 

were the sensation of the hqur. He actually believed 
he had demolished the book — shattered it so com- 
pletely that it must perish from the earth. He said 
he lived in the twilight of Christianity, and so he 
did, but it was the twilight that precedes the day. 
The very house in which he lived and wrote has 
been converted into a Bible depository. Voltaire 
died in 1778 ; the British and Foreign Bible So- 
ciety was organized in 1804. Since then the Bible 
has been translated into about three hundred 
languages and been carried to every corner of the 
earth. It has vanished from book-seller's shelves at 
the rate o^ seven thousand per day for seventy years! 
When the Revised New Testament came out, so 
great was the demand for it that *'from the first of 
Matthew to the end of Romans, about 118,000 
words, the longest message ever wired, was tele- 
graphed from New York to Chicago, for the sake 
of getting it twenty- four hours sooner than steam 
could carry it to print in the Sunday newspapers." 
It does seem as though the book had come to stay . 
The world wants it. The more it is laughed at and 
attacked and despised the more it thrives. As the 
rougli wind only cause the tree to strike its roots 
farther into the earth, so the storms of opposition 



146 Foundation Stones. 

which rage about and against this book only give 
it a firmer grip upon the affections of humanity. 
Other books arc like men. They are born, 
they live, they do their work, they die and are 
buried. But this book is like the race; it lives and 
multiplies forever. It is in fact a most striking 
illustration of the law of the "survival of the fittest. " 
And this fact is not to be overlooked. It lives and 
flourishes because it satisfies a universal hunger, 
and a book that does this could not have been the 
work of impostors and enthusiasts. Let me ask you 
to consider — 

1, The variety of the Booh. Our attention has 
already been called to its remarkable unity. But 
its variety is equally pronounced and wonderful. 
Humanity is many-sided, and to make a book 
thoroughly suited to all classes and conditions was 
a problem worthy of a God. It certainly never 
could have been compassed by man. Whoever 
wrote this Bible must have understood that the 
man of poetic tastes would want to read it and so 
its pages abound in the most thrilling and sublime 
imagery. Isaiah tells of the Lord weighing the 
mountains in scales, and taking up the sea in the 
hollow of his hand, and stretching out the heavens 



An Indestructible Book. 147 

as a curtain. David tells how the earth shook and 
trembled because the Lord was angry; how he 
bowed the heavens and came down, with darkness 
under his feet, flying upon the wings of the wind ! 

The author of this book must have known also 
that the lover of nature would want to read it, and 
so as we pass from chapter to chapter we can hear 
the splashing of the brook, and the water leaping 
from the rock, and the sheep bleating upon the 
hills, and the cattle lowing in the pasture, and the 
wind roaring among the mountains, and the waves 
dashing upon the shore, driven by the terrible 
Euroclydon. We can hear the hum of the bee, and 
catch the fragrance of the rose, and the perfume of 
the lily, and see the harvests billowing in the fields, 
and hear the ring of the reaper's sickle. 

He seems, moreover, to have anticipated the wants 
of the lover of thrilling story, and so has given us 
the graphic narratives of Joseph and Moses and 
Ruth and David and Esther and Job and Jesus — 
stories which to many of us were the delight of our 
childhood, and are the wonder of our maturer 
years. 

Nor did his foresight omit the man who is fond 
of the weird-like and mysterious, but wrote for 



148 Foundation Stones. 

him Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation wherein he 
may revel to his heart's content. So likewise the 
keenly intellectual man has been provided for. In 
the Epistles of Paul he will find logic, therefore 
following therefore in such compact and solid order 
that it will tax his thought to the utmost to follow 
the grand argument, link upon link. Nor did he 
by any means overlook the children, but, with a 
simplicity that is charming, tells of little Samuel in 
the temple, and the boy David among the sheep, 
and the little captive maiden, and the lad Jesus 
among the doctors. Thus in the endless variety of 
the book, old and young, learned and unlearned, 
high and low, persons of all tastes and tempera- 
ments, have been provided for, so that '*it can 
calm the last thoughts of the immortal philosopher, 
and smooth the dying pillow of the negro child." 
But is not this precisely what we would expect in 
a book claiming to be inspired of God ? The wis- 
dom shown in this matchless variety cannot be ac- 
counted for on the ground of unaided human 
authorship. The explanation is too narrow to 
meet all the necessities of the case. If human 
cleverness produced this book why has it never 
been able to produce another that can compare 



An Itidestructible Booh. 149 

with it? Is human cleverness becoming less clever ? 
Does the genius that designed the dome of the 
Capitol at Washington end up by building pigeon 
houses? Until, therefore, human skill shall bring 
forth some competing work, we must be excused 
for assigning to this book an origin divine. Look 
in the next place at — 

2. The effects of this hoohuponmen. The tree 
is known by its fruit. The test is fair and just, 
and tried by that test what shall we say of the Bible ? 
Wherever it goes light follows in its train. I quote 
from a man not usually regarded as a friend of the 
Christian religion, one of the intellectual giants of 
the world, namely, the late Charles Darwin. He 
says: ''The power of an idolatrous priesthood, 
infanticide, profligacy unparalleled elsewhere, 
bloody wars where neither women nor children 
were spared — all these have been abolished by 
Christianity," and to scatter abroad the teachings 
of the Bible among the miserable inhabitants of 
Tierra del Fuego, Canon Farrar tells us that Charles 
Darwin's name may be found among the subscribers 
to the South American mission. A book that can 
make a cannibal people Christian in the short space 
of a lifetime, and cause hoary superstition to topple 



150 Foundation Stmies. 

on her old foundations, and instil new life into 
stagnant civilizations, must be a good book, a 
mighty book. That the Bible does this and more 
anyone can see for himself who will lift up his eyes 
and look. It goes into Wales and elevates the 
standard of morals to such a degree that no bad 
book, no indecent publication, can live in that at- 
mosphere. It goes into Scotland and makes her as 
solid and substantial as her own granite hills — 
makes her the mother-land of your Carlyles, and 
Gladstones, and Livingstones and Duffs. It goes 
into England and makes a little island throw the 
spell of its tremendous energies around the earth 
and zone our planet with her uplifting institutions. 
Up from the "Dark Continent" there comes a 
swarthy chieftain, and amazed at England's great- 
ness, he asks the secret of it and Victoria puts a 
Bible into his hand and tells him the secret is there. 
It comes to America, roots itself in a rugged soil, 
grows into a mighty tree whose branches, reaching 
across the continent, drop their healing leaves over 
mountain and valley and plain. And America will 
be, "the home of the free and the land of the brave" 
just so long as it honors the Bible. 

Mighty book! It goes to Japan and the clouds 



An Indestructible Book. 151 

roll up and away. It goes to Africa and the light 
begins to blaze around her sea-girt shores and is 
answered back by beacons from the far interior. It 
goes to the islands of the sea, and lo! ships carrying 
the threads of commerce, weave those islands into 
the web of nations, and church bells peal forth their 
music to the battling waves. It goes into the tem- 
ple of literature, too often filled with impurities, 
and cleanses it with the scourge of an awakened 
conscience. It goes into politics and rebukes 
charlatanism and demagoguery and corruption and 
lifts aloft the banner of reform. 

Oh, it is a wonderful book — surpassing the wis- 
dom of men; for the tree is known by its fruit. It 
goes into Gibbon's house on Lake Leman and turns 
it into a depot of Christian literature for the moun- 
taineers of Switzerland. It goes into Lord Chester- 
field's parlor, once the rallying point of sneer- 
ing infidelity, and converts it into a vestry-room in 
which to hold prayer-meetings. Goes! It goes 
everywhere, up and down. It goes down into the 
haunts of sin and leaves health and beauty and 
purity in its track. It goes to the man who is 
tired and worn and troubled and says in words ten- 
der as heaven: "Come unto me all ye that labor 



152 Foundation Stones. 

are are heavy laden and I will give you rest." He 
hears, he heeds, and lo! the burden is gone. It 
goes into the house where the hearts of father and 
mother are heavy and their eyes are red with weep- 
ing, because there is heard no more the patter of 
little feet, and it tells them so sweetly that Jesus 
came and put his arm about their little lamb and took 
it away to the upper fold — ''for of such is the 
kingdom of heaven." 

Dear old book! it has balm for every wound. It 
has healing for every troubled soul. It has the 
right word for every occasion. To the sick and 
the afflicted it can speak in tenderer accents than 
those which spring to a mother's lips; to the proud 
and haughty and rebellious, in words that are 
sharper than a two-edged sword. We want its 
council at the marriage alter, we want its comfort 
at the grave, we want it as the guide of youth, we 
want it as the staff of age. 

Go ask the prodigal who has returned from his 
wanderings, the drunkard who has been saved from 
his cups, the debauchee who has been snatched 
from the fires of passion — any man who has come 
up out of sin and uncleanness and moral ruin — 
what it was that rescued him, and will he ascribe 



An Indestructible Booh. 153 

his salvation to infidelity, or mathematics, or science 
or human philosophy? Nay, but iii ninety-nine 
cases out of every hundred he will tell you that it 
was owing to a message from the hook. Perhaps 
he was a miserable wreck, the slave of appetite, a 
gutter drunkard, will-power gone, self-respect gone, 
manhood gone, everything gone, and his family 
ragged and starving, but there came to him a gra- 
cious promise, a word of hope, from the Bible. It 
laid hold upon his soul, it nerved his heart, it aroused 
his conscience, it renewed his will, it kindled again 
the fires of his affection, and now the children are 
tidy and neat, the flush of health has come back to 
the cheek of the wife, there is bread on the table 
and fire on the hearth, and sighs have given place 
to song. This is no fancy sketch but is drawn 
from life. 

While passing thro' a village one day in western 
Massachusetts, a Bible distributor stopped at a cer- 
tain house to leave a copy of the Scriptures. He did so 
with fear and trembling for he had heard that the 
head of the family was an intense hater of Christi- 
anit}^ As he was not at home the agent left the 
book with the wife. She received it reluctantly 
for she dreaded her husband's wrath. Pretty soon 



154 Foundation Stones. 

he returned, with an axe on his shoulder. He saw 
the Bible in her hand and stepping up to her said, 
''We've always had everything in common, and 
we'll have this too." So saying he placed the Bible 
on a block and chopped it in two with his axe, 
giving one part to his wife and keeping the other 
for himself. Not many days after he was in the 
forest chopping wood. At noon he seated himself 
on a log to eat his lunch. He thought of the dis- 
severed Bible, and taking it from his pocket, began 
to read. As Providence would have it, it was the 
story of the prodigal son that fell under his notice, 
but just as he came to the son's exclamation: ''I 
will arise and go to my father" his part ended. At 
night he said to his wife, "Let me have your part 
of the Bible. I've been reading about a boy who ran 
away from home and after having a hard time decided 
to go back. There my part of the book ends, and I 
want to know if he got back and how the old man 
received him." She handed him her part of the 
book. He read the story thro'; he re-read it; he 
read far into the night. Next day he said, "Wife 
I think this is the best book I ever saw." Day after 
day he read it and finally he said, "Wife, I'm going 
to try and live by that book. I guess it's the best 



An Indestriictihle Book 155 

sort of a guide for a man." And is there anyone 
here to-night who will say it is not ? 

This book teaches men to be truthful; it teaches 
them to be pure, sober, faithful, industrious, peace- 
ful, unselfish, kind as parents, obedient as children, 
loyal as citizens, loving as neighbors, and just as 
soon as we can find a community completely regu- 
lated by its spirits and principles we shall find our- 
selves in heaven. Suppose some of you men who 
have been snarling at the Bible, caviling at it, were 
to go home to-night resolved to practice its teach- 
ings just one week. Then you would have to give 
up lying; you would have to give up growling; you 
would have to let the sunshine into your heart and 
into your face; you would have to spend your 
evenings with your families and prefer the home to 
the club, or the lodge, or the theatre, or the office. 
There would be such a change in you that by next 
Saturday night your wives would be the happiest 
mortals on this side of the pearly gates. We know 
what the Bible can do, for we have seen what it has 
done, and a book that has produced such marvelous 
results must be adequately accounted for. 

Everybody knows that where the leaven of this 
book works, where its influence is felt, it is the 



156 Foundation Stones. 

best safeguard of society. The perpetrators of the 
Haymarket Massacre were not readers of the Bible. 
Thieves, murderers, destroyers of homes, enemies 
of social order, bad men of all kinds hate it; for it 
condemns them on every page in words that burn 
like a fire in the soul. While on the other hand 
men seeking to reform abuses, and put down in- 
iquity, and bring about social regeneration, go to it 
for precept and example and inspiration. Now if it 
was not inspired of God it must have been the work 
of liars and impostors, and will some one tell us 
how it comes to pass that a book thus produced 
everywhere promotes truth and righteousness; how 
the stream rises so far above its fountain. In the 
next place let me say a word about — 

3. The comjpleteness of the hook. It be- 
gins with the beginning of the race and un- 
folds under theocracy and monarchy; unfolds book 
by book when Israel is vanquished as well as 
when Israel is victorious, unfolds under kings and 
priests and prophets, unfolds in the teeth of Roman 
persecution and in spite of Jewish hate, until it 
ends in the grand "Amen." On its opening page 
we read: "In the beginning God created the heav- 
ens and the earth;" on its last: "I saw a new heav- 



An Indcstructihle Book. 157 

en and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first 
earth were passed away." In Genesis we find Satan 
coming in to deceive and destroy; in Revelation we 
find him cast out " that he should deceive the na- 
tions no more." At the commencement we read 
that because of man's transgression the earth was 
cursed with thorns and thistles^ at the close we 
read: ''There shall be no more curse but the Throne 
of God and of the Lamb shall be in it." At flic 
beginning there is the tree of life in the midst of 
paradise, but man is excluded from it by a flaming- 
sword; at the end there is the tree of life once 
more, "in the midst of the paradise of God," but 
the flaming sword has been put in its scabbard and 
all who have washed their robes and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb may enter in. As 
we open the book we find man on account of sin 
coming under the power of death and the grave; as 
we are about to close it we read: "The dead, 
small and great, stand before God, and death and 
hell are destroyed in the lake of fire." In the in- 
troductory chapters we seethe first Adam deprived 
of his dominion over earth and driven out of Eden 
in disgrace and sorrow; in those with which the 
book concludes we see the second Adam triumphant 



158 Foundation Stones. 

over sm and death and hell, enthroned as king and 
Lord of all and reigning in glory forever ! * 

Thus the book is rounded out; it is complete, not 
a stone is wanting from base to pinnacle. The 
solemn minor of "Paradise Lost " brightens away 
into the thrilling and loud-swelling major of "Para- 
dise Regained." Men can see backward and draw 
a few inferences from things that are gone. They 
wax eloquent as they tell us about origin but leave 
us in ignorance as to destiny. Not so does the 
Bible. Its light shines both ways, backward and 
forward. It knows no barrier of time. It cannot 
be limited by days and years. Representing time as a 
river flowing dovv^n between two eternities the Bible 
is the bridge that spans it. It comes up out of 
eternity on one side and goes off into eternity on 
the other. It is a complete book. It cannot be 
supplemented; it cannot be abridged. It were 
easier to add a tinge of beauty to the lily, a ray of 
brightness to the sun, than to improve upon this 
book. 

Whence then did it come ? When we consider 
its unpparalleled conception of God, its style, its 
boldness, the frankness of its writers, its subject 
matter, its boundless resources, its unity, its fore- 

^Oondensed from H L. Hastings Famous Lecture on Inspiration. 



An Indestructible Book. 159 

sight, its variety, its effects, its completeness, its 
survival, and remember that in every one of these 
respects it is unapproached by any other book, we 
repeat, whence did it come? We are told that when 
Columbus sailed into the mouth of the Orinoco river 
someone said to him: *'This river flows from 
some island." But he replied: "No such river as 
that flows from an island. That mighty torrent 
must drain the waters of a continent." So it seems 
to me unreasonable to believe that such a pure and 
mighty river of truth as is found in this Bible ever 
came from the little island hearts of men. The 
only adequate explanation of the fact is that it 
flows from the measureless continent of God's love 
and wisdom and grace. 



160 Foundation Stones. 



The Christ 



" What think ye of Christ ? ''—Matt. 22 : 42. 

In the writings popularly known as the Gospels, 
we have the story of a most unique and wonderful 
life. Look at it from whatever point of view we 
will, it stands alone. It lifts itself far above the 
ordinary plane of humanity into the deep blue of 
heaven and gathers about it the sunshine of God. 
It is majestic, yet simple; "earnest without being 
fierce, and calm without being dull." It is mighty 
in power, and yet infinitely tender. It is not pitched 
to a high key of excitement, but flows along in 
quiet dignity and grandeur, from first to last, as 
the river moves serenely on to its home in the sea. 
There is nothing spasmodic about it. It is not 
characterized by occasional great efibrts whose in- 
terstices are filled up with the trite and common- 
pUice. Be our belief what it may, we are con- 
strained to admit that the life of the Christ pro- 



The Christ. 161 



ceeds forward very much after the manner of a 
God. He is ])orn in a manger, trained in a car- 
penter's shop, ])rought up in the midst of the most 
humble circumstances, but when he opens his mouth 
all the ages listen. He speaks and men wonder at 
the gracious words that fall from his lips. He re- 
bukes sin in a tone that burns into the soul like 
fire; he denounces hypocrisy in terms that are hot 
and withering with the breath of indignation; but 
to the poor outcast, spumed aside by every foot, 
he speaks in accents more soft and sweet than ^vere 
ever articulated ])y mortal tongue. He is original 
without being eccentric, holy without being sanc- 
timonious, serious without being sour, stern with- 
out being severe, and tender without being weak. 
Though a Jew by birth he loves the world; though 
of the seed-royal he is no respecter of persons. The 
poor and the illiterate are just as welcome to his 
company as the refined and rich and educated. He 
mingles with men, speaks their language, resists 
their temptations, endures their experiences, and 
yet he seems to walk among the stars. He prays 
as naturally as he breathes, and in answer to his 
supplications, blessings distil upon men like the 
rain. Indeed his character has in it an ethereal cast 



162 Foundation Stones. 

which seems to speak of another and higher world. 
In him, moreover, we see the most opposite ele- 
ments combine in perfect harmony. Pure as a 
star, he is tempted as never man was tempted. 
Mighty enough to furnish bread for the famished 
multitudes, he appeases his own hunger by eating 
raw corn in the field. Able to bring money from 
the mouth of a fish with which to pay the custom 
dues for himself and Peter, he is nevertheless so 
poor that he has not where to lay his head. With 
power suflicient to calm the raging of the sea with 
a word, we find him sitting on the curb of Jacob's 
well, weary with his journey, askmg drink of a 
woman that is a sinner. He raises the dead, yet 
falls a victim to Pharisaic hate. "He saved others; 
himself he could not save." But these contrasted 
and apparently incongruous elements blend in him 
without ajar; they conspire to give us a character 
of the most wonderful symmetry. If he is set forth 
as God, we find that his words and works abun- 
dantly sustain that claim; if as a man, we find that 
his humanity is as real as our own. Such very 
imperfectly sketched is the character of Jesus as we 
see it in the Gospels. Without stopping to say 
anj^thing about the genuineness of these Gospels, 



The Christ. 163 



let me remind you that the picture they draw is a 
fact, hung up in the chambers of literature, and 
must be accounted for. The first question I pro- 
pose to-night is this — 

/. Could the character of the Christ have heen 
invented? It is admitted by all that there is an 
originality about it that is amazing, and puts it into 
a class by itself. But originality in a writer is a 
very rare gift. There may be cleverness amount- 
ing to genius in the arrangement of pre-existing 
material but that is a very different thing from in- 
venting de novo. Take the great poets of the world 
and which one of them can be called original in the 
strict sense of that word ? Virgil borrows from 
Homer, Dante from Virgil, and Milton from Dante. 
Even Shakespeare, it is said, "borrowed his plots, 
incidentsand characters without scruple. True, he 
improved them when he made them his own, but 
still they were not original." Or take the heroes 
and heroines of Scott, and Thackeray, and Haw- 
thorne, the great masters of fiction, and what one 
of them can be said to be truly and purely origi- 
nal ? They are not creations, but simply improved 
copies of what these sons of genius saw about them 
in human society or read in the books But from 



164: Foundation Stones, 

whom did the writers of the Gospels copy ? What 
character could have given them a clue to such a 
life as that of Christ ? See what men who cannot 
be classed among his worshippers have said about 
him. "His character," says Leckey, "through all 
the changes of eighteen centuries has filled the hearts 
of men with impassioned love, and has shown itself 
capable of acting on all ages, nations, tempera- 
ments, and conditions; has not only been the high- 
est pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive to 
its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence 
that it may be truly said that the simple record of 
three short years of active life has done more to re- 
generate and soften mankind than all the disquisi- 
tions of philosophers, and than all the exhortations 
of moralists." John Stuart Mill calls him: "The 
ideal representative and guide of humanity." Says 
Diderot, the atheist: "I defy you all, as many as 
are here, to prepare a tale so simple, and at the 
same time so sublime and so touching, as the tale 
of the passion and death of Jesus." Says Strauss, 
the German rationalist: "He remains the highest 
model of religion within the reach of our thought, 
and no perfect piety is possil>le without his pres- 
ence in the heart." And Dr. Channing, the great 



The Christ. 165 



Unitarian, speaks of him thus: "The character of 
Jesus is wholly inexplicable on human principles." 
The infidel, Rcnan, as he contemplates his death, 
breaks forth as follows: "Repose now in Thy 
glory, noble founder. Thy work is finished ; Thy 
divinity established. * * * * * 

For thousands of years the world will depend on 
Thee! ****-5f*^--jf 

A thousand times more beloved since Thy death 
than during Thy passage here below. Thou shalt 
become the corner-stone of humanity so entirely, 
that to tear Thy name from this world would be to 
rend it to its foundations. " Hear, also, Theodore 
Parker: "Measure him," says he, "by the shadow 
he has cast into the world — no, by the light he has 
shed upon it. Shall we be told that such a man 
never lived — that the whole story is a lie ? Suppose 
that Plato and Newton had never lived. But who 
did their wonders and thought their thoughts ? It 
takes a Newton to forge a Newton. Whatman could 
have fabricated Jesus ? None but Jesus." Listen, 
also, to the words of Rousseau. Speaking of the 
Christ he exclaims: "What sweetness, what purity 
in his ways, what touching grace in his teachings! 
What loftiness in his maxims, what profound wisdom 



166 Foundation Stones. 

in his words! What presence of mind, what delicacy 
and aptness in his replies! What an empire over his 
passions! Where is the man, where is the sage, who 
knows how to act, to suffer and to die, without weak- 
ness and display ? My friend," he continues, ''men 
do not invent like this; and the facts respecting Soc- 
rates, which no one doubts, are not so well attested 
as those about Jesus Christ. These Jews could 
never have struck this tone, or thought of this mor- 
ality, and the Gospel has characteristics of truth- 
fulness so grand, so striking, so perfectly inimita- 
ble, that their inventors would be even more won- 
derful than he whom they portray." 

But I forbear to quote farther, although testimony 
to this effect might be adduced by the hour. Let 
it be borne in mind that the writers of the Gospels 
were not great men. They were neither scholars 
nor geniuses. Matthew was a collector of taxes; 
Mark a disciple of the fisherman Peter; Luke was 
a physician and evidently an educated man, but not 
possessed of any marked literary skill, and John 
was a fisherman. How, then, did it come to pass 
that these men depicted such a matchless character 
as that of Christ ? Whence came this sublime con- 
ception ? They were Jews, every one of them, but 



The Christ. 167 



Jesus is neither Jew nor Gentile. The world is 
His country, and as Leckey says: *'He acts on all 
ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions." 
These writers were sinful men like ourselves, but 
they have given us an absolutely sinless character. 
They set before us in the most simple and unaf- 
fected manner a life transcendently grand, alto- 
gether unapproached by the greatest inventions of 
human genius, and yet they were obscure and com- 
paratively ignorant men. Now, I say, account for 
it. Give us a reasonable explanation of this as- 
tonishing fact. I am very certain that if you look 
into the matter carefully you will be convinced 
that these men were not inventors but reporters; 
that they wrote down the things which they had seen 
and heard, and that Jesus was as real as any char- 
acter that ever figured in human history. The sec- 
ond question which I propose for our consideration 
is this — 

II. WAS CHRIST WHAT HE CLAIMED TO BE? 

1. He claims to he all-powerful. To his disci- 
ples he said: ''AH power is given unto me in heaven 
and in earth." ''For as the Father raiseth up the 
dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quick- 
eneth whom he will." 



168 Foundation Stones. 

2. He claims to be omnipresent. * 'Where two 
or three are gathered together in my name, there 
ami in the midst of them." "Lo, I am with you 
always, even unto the end of the world." 

3. He claims to have existed hefore the world 
was. In that infinitely solemn prayer of his in the 
seventeenth chapter of John he uses these words: 
"And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine 
own self with the glory which I had with Thee be- 
fore the world was." 

4. He claims to have come from God. Thus : 
"I proceeded forth and came from God." Again : 
"I came from the Father, and am come into the 
world." 

5. He claims to be the Judge before whom all 
men shall be gathered : ' 'When the Son of man 
shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with 
him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his 
glory; and before him shall be gathered all nations; 
and he shall separate them one from another." 
"Foi the Father judgeth no man; but hath com- 
mitted all judgment unto the Son." 

6. He claims a right to equal honor with the 
Father. "That all men should honor the Son even 
as they honor the Father." "He that honoreth 



The Christ. 169 



not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath 
sent him." 

7. He claims to be able to forgive sin. * ' But 
that ye may know that the Son of man hath power 
on earth to forgive sin, then saith he to the sick of 
the palsy: Arise, take up thy bed and go unto 
thine house." "And he said unto her, 'thy sins 
are forgiven. ' " 

8. Hq c\diim^iohQ without sin. "Which of you 
convinceth me of sin? " Conscious of his purity 
he flings down the challenge, and the testimony of 
the ages is: "I find no fault in him at all." 

9. He claims to be one with the Father. "I and 
my Father are one." "He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father." 

Such are a few of the claims he makes. Besides, 
he calls himself the "lightof the world," "the bread 
of life," "the way, the truth, and the life," "the 
door," "the shepherd," "the vine," and so on, as 
though he would lay hold of the most common and 
necessary things, of the tenderest and most beautiful 
emblems, to set himself forth and bring himself 
down to the level of our comprehension. 

Now, in the face of these claims, it is universally 
conceded that Christ's character is perfect. His 



170 Foundation Stones, 

purity is without stain. No man can point out a 
single item of his life that could be improved upon. 
Even his enemies admit that he is without spot or 
blemish or any such thing. The morality of his 
precepts is sublime, lofty as heaven, and his con- 
duct tallies with it in every particular. He lives 
up to his own principles. Betsveen his profession and 
his practice there is not the least disparity. He is 
true and consistent throughout. 

But let us suppose that his claims are false. Let 
us assume that he was not omnipotent and omni- 
present ; that he was not equal to the Father; that 
he could not forgive sin; that he was not divine, 
but simply a man; then it follows that he was not 
good and true, but of all men the most consummate 
impostor. He was a man we say and sinless, yet 
he put forth claims to which he had no right. He 
not only used language conveying the idea that he 
was God, but allowed himself to be worshiped 
by the disciples and called Lord and God. If he 
was only a man this, of course, was idolatry, and 
yet he suffered it to go unreproved. The Jews 
certainly understood him to claim that he was God, 
and for this they condemned him to death; he 
was also honored as divine by his followers, and if 



The Christ. 171 



he was not, why did he not disabuse their minds 
of a dekision so cruel? Will a good and pure and 
noble man allow his friends to entertain opinions of 
him which are not only utterly false but which will 
lead to persecution and reproach and martyrdom ? 

The fact is, if these claims of Christ are false, 
then, as another has said — and I quote the language 
almost with bated breath — "there is something 
fearfully dark and wicked about his character. The 
sin of fiilsehood he must have carried to a complete 
perfection. The sin of blasphemy he must have 
been guilty of in a higher degree than was ever pos- 
sible to any mortal man. His ambition must have 
gone beyond all limits. The evil he has set in mo- 
tion is beyond all reckoning. He has corrupted 
the whole current of human history. He has de- 
luded millions of people for nineteen centuries, and 
made them rank idolaters. Surely he is the great 
impostor of a race ; a man so mighty in sin that 
forgiveness cannot reach him." 

Now that seems like a terrible thing to say, but 
what else can be said if Jesus Christ was only a 
man ? He made claims that belonged to God only, 
claims which, if we were to hear them fall from the 
lips of any mere human being, would lead us either 



172 Foundation Stones. 

to brand him with insanity or with infamy. What 
would you think of a man who should say to you in 
all seriousness: "Before Abraham was I am. " 
"I have power to lay down my life, and I have 
power to take it again." "Whatsoever ye shall ask 
in my name, I will do it." You would charge him 
either with being deranged or devilish. Such words, 
such claims, can be uttered consistently only by an 
infinite and eternal God. Put them upon the lips 
of Plato, or Socrates, or Paul, or Milton, or Shakes- 
peare, or Emerson, and they seem ridiculous and 
absurd, or blasphemous in the extreme, and why 
should they be otherwise on the lips of Jesus if he 
was a mere man ? 

Just see into what a tangle of contradictions we 
are driven if we believe that these claims are false. 
If they are false, then it follows that the holiest 
man, confessedly, that ever lived, led a life of im- 
posture ; that the " loftiest ideal of humanity" 
usurped honors which did not belong to him; that 
the most lovely and candid being that ever trod the 
earth was guilty of playing a part ; that the most 
humble of the sons of men was filled with vanity ; 
that he who was the most unselfish was constantly 
exalting himself ; that the heart that was full of 



The Christ 173 



deceit never wearied of communing with God; that 
he who died to establish the world's purest and 
best religion was what the Jews called him, "a de- 
ceiver. " 

That, fellow-raen, is the logic of the situation, and 
there is no escaping it. Here is the Christ of his- 
tory with a character white as the throne of God. 
It could not have been invented; that is conceded. 
This character is set forth in the Gospels which are 
acknowledo^ed to be the oris^inal sources of all we 
know concerning Jesus. Upon every page of these 
Gospels you will find these claims which we have 
been considering. If they are false everything is 
false, and we have the mass of contradictions to 
which I have referred. I tell you, my hearers, if it 
is hard to be a believer, it is harder to be a skeptic. 

See how the matter stands. Jesus either uttered 
these claims or he did not. If he did not we can- 
not believe the Gospels; if we cannot believe the 
Gospels, Jesus was a fiction ; if Jesus was a fiction 
he is the sublimest creation of human genius, and 
the sublimest creation of human genius emanated 
from obscure and unlearned men! Who amonsr us 
is willing to take that view of the case ? 

But if Jesus did utter these claims they must be 



174 Foundation Stones. 

true; for we have seen the absurdities into which 
we are driven by assuming that they are false. 

Admitting that they are true, difficulties vanish, 
contradictions are reconciled, the sky clears away. 
The miracles fall into their proper places and seem 
to belong to him as naturally as light belongs to the 
sun. His power and his weakness, his majesty 
and his lowliness, his sovereignty and his service, 
his riches and his poverty, his wondrous words, 
and parables and paradoxes all conspire to produce 
the same divine harmony. 

Whether we see him in the manger, or in the 
wilderness, or moving among men, or dying on the 
cross, or alive from the dead, the music is one, 
rythmic in its consistency and heavenly in every 
burst and throb and strain from prelude to finale. 

We look at his life, we look at his words, we 
look at his works; we follow him over the hills 
and into the city; we watch him in home and tem- 
ple and synagogue, teaching, healing and scattering 
blessings on every side; we contemplate him in all 
sorts of relations and tho' we see not the prints of 
the nails in his hands and his feet we exclaim with 
swelling hearts: "My Lord and my God." He 
weeps, but behind the tears there is a hiding of 



The Christ. 175 



almighty power. He condemnSj but never in bit- 
terness and anger. Back of the words there is a 
a tone of infinite pity. He pleads and his accents 
seem to be thrown to the sm^face from a heart burst- 
ing with suffering love. He said he came to save 
and in beautiful agreement with that program, the 
one feeling that rules him is, compassion. Thus 
the practice fits right into the profession. 

Young men and women, all who hear me to-night, 
"what think ye of Christ ? " He says he is Sa- 
vior, Redeemer and Lord. He says he is the only 
way back to the Father, the "light of the world," 
the life of the soul, the door thro' which men must 
enter the kingdom of God, if ever they enter at all, 
and that he will come again to judge the world. 

"What think ye of Christ?" Do you say he 
was only a man ? Then you not only become in- 
volved in these contradictions which I have pointed 
out, but you give the lie to the Holy One of Israel. 
"What think ye of Christ?" Do you say he is 
God manifest in the flesh ? Then what excuse can 
you render for withholding from him your hom- 
age and love ? Do you say nothing or care nothing 
about it one way or the other ? In that case your 
indifference is unworthy of a man with a brain and 



176 Foundation Stones. 

heart and is even more culpable in the sight of 
heaven than downright antagonism. My closing 
word to-night shall be to urge you to Christ. I 
would come nearer to him myself and catch more 
of his spirit for he is the "one altogether lovely." 
He is divine, Son of Mary, Son of God, Immanuel, 
the Prince of Peace, the Savior of sinners, the only 
one that has the words of eternal life. "Neither is 
there salvation in any other, for there is none other 
name under heaven given among men whereby we 
must be saved." 



What Then? 177 



fV/ia^ Then? 



" What shall we then say to these thi7igsV' — Rom, S : jr. 

To-night we bring this series of lectures to a close. 
I have been not a little gratified at the interest they 
have awakened, and by the kindness with which 
they have been received. It would be easy to pro- 
long them much farther but we have gone far 
enough for our purpose. To attempt anything like 
an exhaustive examination of the great doctrines of 
the Christian system was not my design, even if I 
had been equal to such a task, but simply to call 
attention to some of the Foundation Stones 
on which we build. The Christian system is a 
mighty structure and to investigate the quality of 
its material, the strength of its walls, the skill of its 
workmanship, and all the niceties of its architec- 
ture, would be an immense undertaking, though no 
doubt if we had the patience and pluck to go into 
it we would be amply repaid for our trouble. I am 
quite certain we would find some things about the 
building which were not in the original plan of the 
Architect; little touches and conceits and refine- 



178 Foundation Stones. 

ments of a very human kind here and there which 
detract in no small degree from the general effect, 
but I feel sure that on the whole we would be 
struck with the solidity ofits masonry and the mag- 
nificence of its finish. Any one who will take the 
pains to "walk about Zion and go round about her, 
tell the towers thereof, mark well her bulwarks and 
consider her palaces," will be abundantly rewarded 
therefor. But we have not essayed anything so 
ambitious. It has been ours merely to take a look 
at the fundamentals upon which the whole super- 
structure rests. We found that the facts of nature, 
order, design, the existence of life, the adaptation 
of means to ends, the traces of benevolence, the 
facts of human life, man's incompleteness in time, 
the desires of his heart, the admonitions of con- 
science, the facts of human society , its inequalities, 
its progress amid strife, the ultimate triumph of 
right, — can be satisfactorily explained only by as- 
suming the existence of a holy and eternal God. 
We found, moreover, that the facts of the Bible, 
its sublime conception of God, its tone of authority, 
the entire frankness of its writers, its boldness, its 
radicalness, its omissions, its unity, its variety, its 
effect upon men, its completeness, can be accounted 



Whxit Then? 179 



for only by the doctrine of inspiration. We found 
still farther that no such character as that of Christ 
could have been invented, that he was not only a 
real person but must have been what he claimed to 
be, God manifest in the flesh, thro' whom alone 
men can attain unto everlasting life. 

These are our foundation stones and they are 
tried and sure and precious. God who loved the 
world, the Son who died for the world, and the 
Book that brings us the glorious news. *'What 
then shall we say to these things ? " I think we 
may say first that — 

I. THEY TEACH US THE FOLLY AND SHALLOWNESS 
OF INFIDELITY. 

It is not affirmed that there are no diffi- 
culties connected with belief, but in view of the 
facts which we have been considering, unbelief is 
a great deal harder. God has written his name 
upon the universe in letters so large and plain that 
he who runs may read it. Said a French infidel to 
an Arab guide who was leading him over a desert, 
and who was ever and anon throwing himself upon 
the sand to pray: ' 'How do you know there is a God?" 
To which the guide replied: ''How do I know that a 
man and camel passed before our tent last night ? I 



180 Fowndation Stones. 

know it by the foot-prints in the sand. And, sir, 
look at that sunset. Is that the foot-print of a 
man ? " And one time when the great First Consul 
of France was on ship-board with some of his promi- 
nent officers, the conversation turned upon religious 
matters. Some of them began to scoflf and air their 
atheism, whereupon he rose and said, as he pointed 
to the stars: ''Very well gentlemen, but who made 
all these?" 

If a man were to come to you and insist that a 
certain machine was the work of chance, or that a 
certain beautiful painting had evolved itself out of 
chaos, or that a certain house had come together 
part upon part, without a builder, you would be 
apt to call him a fool, or conclude that he certainly 
took you to be one. So ' 'the fool hath said in his 
heart, there is no God. " The individual who can 
be an atheist with all the great facts of nature and 
human life and society spread out before him, is of 
all men the most credulous. He has a larger ca- 
pacity for belief thfin the most ignorant idolater. 

And can any greater folly be imagined than to 
sneer at a book to which even the ungodly and un- 
devout have been compelled to pay the highest trib- 
ute of praise ? "The Gospel," said Napoleon Bon- 



What Then? 181 



aparte, "possesses a secret virtue, a something 
which works powerfully, a warmth which both in- 
fluences the understanding and penetrates the heart. 
The Gospel is no mere book, but a living creature 
with an agency, a power, which conquers all that 
opposes it. Here lies this Book of books upon the 
table. I do not tire of reading it and do so daily 
with equal pleasure." Says Theodore Parker: 
*'The literature of Greece which goes up like in- 
cense from that land of temples and heroic deeds, 
has not half the influence of this book from a nation 
despised alike in ancient and modern times. * * -^ 
It is woven into the literature of the scholar, and 
colors the talk of the street. It enters men's clos- 
ets and mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of 
life. The Bible attends men in sickness when the 
fever of the world is on them. The aching head 
finds a softer pillow when the Bible lies beneath." 
And so I might continue to quote. The greatest of 
men have made it their companion and guide. The 
illustrious Gladstone carries it with him constantly, 
reads it by day and meditates upon it by night. 
To thrust it aside, therefore, coldly, indifferently, 
and even contemptuously, as some young people do, 
is in the highest degree foolish. It indicates not 



182 Foundation Stones. 

only a careless and trifling heart but a very shallow 
brain. 

In this book we have that transcendent picture 
of Jesus Christ to which your attention was called 
a week ago. Other characters can be sounded, 
measured, weighed, but we have no line long enough 
to fathom the depths, no glass strong enough to see 
up to the heights, of the matchless character of 
Christ. The more we look at it the more amazing 
it seems. There is a brightness about it above the 
brightness of the sun, but like the sun it warms and 
vivifies while it dazzles. If he is great upward, far 
beyond our thought, he is equally great downward. 
His exaltation is only paralleled by his condescen- 
sion. ''Never man spake like this man," said his 
enemies . "I find in him no fault at all, " said Pilate 
the wily politician. "Truly this was the Son of 
God," exclaimed the Roman centurion. ''Thou 
art the Christ the Son of the living God," answered 
Peter the man of rock. And such is the concurrent 
testimony of the greatest and wisest men that have 
ever lived. I cannot forbear to quote the words of 
two of the world's mighty men, neither of them a 
Christian, and hence their testimony cannot be said 
to have been colored by prejudice. In the course 



What Then? 183 



of a long conversation with his friend and compan- 
ion, General Bertrand, on the Isle of St. Helena, 
among other things, Napoleon said: **In every 
other existence but that of Christ how many im- 
perfections. Where is the character which has not 
yielded, vanquished by obstacles ? Where is the 
individual who has never been governed by circum- 
stances or places, who has never succumbed to the 
influences of the times, has never compounded with 
any customs or passions ? From the first day to 
the last, he is the same, always the same — majestic 
and simple, infinitely firm and infinitely gentle." 
Again he says, ' 'I know men, and I tell you that 
Jesus Christ was not a man." And he concludes 
thus: '' General Bertrand, if you do not perceive 
that Jesus Christ is God, very well ; then I did 
wi'ong to make you a general." The second quota- 
tion is from Disraeli, the famous premier of Great 
Britain. Kef erring to what the Jews anticipated 
from their Messiah he says: *'The wildest dreams 
of their rabbis have been far exceeded. Has not 
Jesus conquered Europe and changed its name into 
Christendom? All countries that refuse the Cross 
wither • * * * * * "'^ * 

and the time will come when the vast communities 



184 Foundation Stones, 

and countless myriads of America and Australia, 
looking upon Europe as Europe now looks upon 
Greece, and wondering how so small a space could 
have achieved such great deeds, will find music in 
the songs of Zion, and still seek solace in the para- 
bles of Galilee." 

Believe me, young friends, it is no mark of at- 
tainment or brilliancy or intellectual strength to be 
skeptical and indifierent as to these great matters, 
but a mark of something the very opposite, which 
we shall leave unnamed. God is a fact, the Bible 
is a fact, Jesus Christ is a fact, — the most solemn 
and profoundly significant facts that ever came to 
the knowledge of men, and it is strange and sad 
that any should be found foolish enough, superfi- 
cial enough, to ignore them. These facts have been 
wrought into our civilization, wrought into our lit- 
erature, wrought into the songs we sing, wrought 
into the very constitution of things, and if it were 
possible to tear them out, the home, society, all the 
institutions men hold dear, would be rent in sunder, 
and red-handed anarchy begin its reign. I beg you, 
therefore, as you regard your own and the welfare 
of your fellowmen, to give to these facts the serious 
consideration which their importance deserves. A 



What Then? 185 



God who loved us, a Saviour who died for us, a 
Book that brings to us the gracious and wonderful 
tidings. "What shall we say to these things? " I 
think, in the second place, we may say that — 

II. TIIEY TEACH US THE SOLEMNITY OF LIFE. 

Let any man sit down and seriously reflect upon 
it with these great facts in mind, and it will make 
him grave and sober I assure you, if it does not ap- 
pall him with its infinite significance. His life is 
from God, but in passing through the world it be- 
comes tainted and corrupted with sin, and when the 
time-circle is rounded out it is going back to God to 
be judged according to the deeds done in the body. 
If the sin has been blotted out in the blood of 
Christ, that life will shine forever among the spirits 
of the pure and blest; if not, it will go away into 
the dark and stern and pitiless condition of things 
which it has made for itself, called in the graphic 
language of the Scriptures, ' ' outer darkness where 
there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of 
teeth." Given a holy and righteous God, who to 
save sinners sends his Son down to the humiliation 
of the manger, the agony of the garden, the shame 
and torture of the Cross, and inspires men to write 
a book by which to convey the good tidings to the 



186 Foundation Stones. 

race, — given these stupenduous facts and the alter- 
natives they present are enough to blanch the cheek 
and freeze the heart. These facts we cannot deny. 
The proofs in their favor are many and infallible. 
They are written in our hearts and written on the 
face of nature, and flame from the pages of the past 
and the teachings of the present, and press upon 
us in the anticipations of the future. To set our- 
selves against them is to run in the face of Omnip- 
otence; to be indifferent to them is not only moral 
insensibility but moral insanity. It is to walk on 
the brink of a precipice when the next step may 
plunge us into the ab3^ss. The only wisdom is in 
bringing ourselves into harmony with these facts as 
soon as possible; for until we do we shall be in 
jeopardy every hour. 

Depend upon it, young friends, life is no trifle. 
It is not simply a fire that has been kindled to bum 
for a few days, only to go out in the night. It is 
not something to be toyed with and petted and 
pampered and feasted upon the delusive pleasures 
of time, but so precious, so dear to the heart of 
God, that his Son consented to die for its redemp- 
tion, and the angels of heaven regard it with pro- 
found interest; so much so that when it puts itself 



What Then? 187 



in the keeping of Christ they rejoice with unspeak- 
able joy. ' ^ What then shall we say to these things?" 
I think we may say in the third place that — 

III. THEY TEACH US THE GRANDEUR OF LIFE. 

The traces of benevolences everywhere seen in 
nature, the division of the earth into land and 
water, thus promoting the diffusion of rain and fa- 
cilitating commerce, the treasures of coal and iron 
and the various metals, the regularity of the sea- 
sons — all seem to indicate that in making the world 
God had man in view. He seems to have been the 
objective point of creation. Step by step God 
moved up the mighty sweep of matter and life un- 
til he reached man, upon whom he stamped his 
own image as a being with whom he could enter 
into a bond of spiritual communion ; then he " rested 
from all the work which he had made. " Think of the 
grandeur this gives to life, young people. You 
cannot reach life with the point of the scalpel. You 
cannot weigh it in scales. It is spirit, the very breath 
of God. It is a beam from the everlasting Light. 
Speaking of man an eloquent preacher over the sea 
says: ''Two worlds contend for his possession ; 
the angels want him, and the damned host gnash 
their teeth upon him and long to devour him. 



188 Foundation Stoi 



les. 



What is he ? Some dying insect ; some frail, ani- 
mated dust, some little creature that can be con- 
sumed utterly as to his soul, as well as to his body, 
before the moth ? It is not so that I read the Bibli- 
cal account of my own nature ; the divinity stirs 
within me, I can utter vast prayers, I can stretch 
my supplications onward till the stars fall under 
them. * ^ * * Do not tell me that 
I am little and mean and worthless. I know what 
I am when the devil would give all he has to get 
me, and Christ laid down his life that I may never 
die." The words are true. With God bending 
over us with infinite yearning, loving us with an 
everlasting love ; with the Son flinging aside the 
purple of empire and fleeing to our rescue ; with 
the great, rugged, thunder-riven, Cross speaking to 
us over the ages with an eloquence which time only 
heightens and glorifies ; with this dear old book 
forever re[)eating to us the matchless story ; with 
all these glorious facts before our eyes we can see 
something of the grandeur that belongs to our na- 
ture. We were never made to live a mere animal 
life and then die as the brute dies. We are sons of 
God — prodigals it may be and far away from the 
Father's house, — but sons still for whom the home- 



What Then? 189 



door stands ajar to-night to welcome us back, and 
oh, that we might be induced to step over its blessed 
threshold this very hour. I know what we are, not 
because the scientific man has spoken, not because 
the philosopher has written a 1)ook and filled it with 
his wise sayings, not because mighty men of genius 
have filled our libraries with their learning, but be- 
cause of the Cross of Jesus Christ. Therein I read 
the mystery of my life, the value of my soul, and 
the essential dignity of my nature. That tragedy, 
felt by anticipation in Eden, and sending a thrill 
through all the ages, was not enacted for nothing. 
With all the pathos of the skies it tells us that w^e 
are not worms of the dust, not creatures of an hour, 
but sons and daughters of the "King, eternal, im- 
mortal, invisible, the only wise God," and that he 
longs to have us come back again into the kingdom 
which sin caused us to forfeit, and take our places 
in the royal family of heaven. I know what I am 
only when I read that the heart of the Lord Jesus 
actually broke to save me, and how stupid, how 
unspeakably foolish it would be to sell my life for 
a mess of pottage, instead of rising to the height of 
my glorious birthright. " What shall we then say 



190 Foundation Stones. 

to these things?" This is what we shall say as 
the conclusion of the whole matter, that — 

IV. THEY CONSTITUTE OUR ONLY HOPE. 

The centre and source of this universe is God. 
The foundation of human hope is Christ the Son. 
The only rule of faith and conduct that will stand 
the light of the judgment day is the Bible. If out- 
side of these there is any other substantial hope, 
any other standard of living worthy of men, they 
have never yet appeared, and from all we can see 
on the horizon of human thought they are not likely 
to. "Among the gods" there is none like unto the 
God of Christianity. Among saviors and prophets 
who can stand for a moment beside the Prophet of 
Nazareth ? Among all the sacred books which one is 
fit to be compared with the Bible ? Outside of these, 
all is vague and shadowy and dark. There is noth- 
ing definite and tangible enough on which to found 
a hope that can act upon human life as an inspira- 
tion; and hence it is that despair spreads its black 
wings over all pagan and unchristian lands. 

These, then, are the foundation stones on which 
we build. They have been pounded by many a 
hammer, but the hammers are gone while they re- 
main. They have been assailed, criticised and 



What Then? 191 



laughed at, but the critics and clever wits pass 
away into the silence of oblivion while these abide, 
immortal, imperisliable. Come tlien, young peo- 
ple, come, and build upon the foundation offered 
you in the Gospel. You will find no other, though 
you were to search creation through. Here the 
l)est and wisest and brainiest men of history have 
built, for elsewhere they saw no hope, no refuge 
for the soul. They lool^ed to reason, but its light 
cast too short a beam. They looked to morality, 
but they found it a cold and well-chiseled statue 
which could impart no warmth and inspiration to 
the soul. They looked to philosophy but it left 
them weary and sick, groping in the dark. But 
they looked upward; they cast themselves upon the 
mercies of God in Jesus Christ according to the 
Gospel, and the light dawned, and with it came a 
hope, both sure and steadfast. Go ye and do like- 
wise and the result will be the same. 

Do you tell me that this is an age of great intel- 
lectual activity ? I admit it ; but what has that to 
do with the soul which must soon spread its wings 
for the eternal flight ? Do you tell me in answer to 
my conceni for your welfare that science is making 
very rapid strides ? True, true ; but can science 



192 Foundation Stones. 

lay a foundation sure and strong enough upon 
which to walk out into the hereafter ? Do you re- 
mind me that there has been wonderful progres ^ in 
knowledge? Yea, verily. But what can all this 
boasted knowledge do when the fire burns low on 
the hearth and the soul flutters in the cold breath 
of eternity ? I tell you, fellow men, in the stern 
and solemn hours of life, when sorrow settles about 
us like a cloud whose bosom is charged with storms, 
when nights of trial fall about us with a darkness 
that is crushing, when the bitter, bitter cup of dis- 
appointment is pressed to the lips, when every day 
that comes to us out of the future brings only fail- 
ure and defeat, we want something more than hu- 
man wisdom can offer. Indeed at such times it can 
only mock us. We want a hope that will flame 
out like a star above the blackest storm. We want 
within us a light that can transform the cloud into a 
canopy of glory. We want to feel around us an 
arm that is tender and mighty. We want to feel 
beneath our feet, no foundation of sand, but the 
''Rock of Ages." To that Rock, young people, 
you are invited to-night. God help you to come 
and build your house there, and to his name be the 
glory forever. Amen. 



.)/ 



